


give me your heart (we'll make it real)

by thundersquall



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Auctions, Comeplay, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, Feminization, Gangbang Kink, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Orgy, Public Sex, Rimming, Sex Toys, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Under-negotiated Kink, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 01:07:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 48,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7554286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundersquall/pseuds/thundersquall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonny picks up the fountain pen on the desk, flips to the last page, and with only a second of hesitation, he signs.</p><p>And that's it. He has a pleasure slave. Bought and kept purely for his sexual pleasure.</p><p>(Or: the story of how Jonathan Toews buys himself a pleasure slave, and neglects to prepare for the possibility of falling in love.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first off: this fic is about slavery - specifically sexual slavery, which is why i tagged it with the dubious consent tag. the other tags do not indicate recurring themes throughout the fic; rather, there are specific scenes with such kinks, so i thought it best to warn for everything. other than that, patrick is a willing and enthusiastic participant in, well, everything. but if the idea of slavery makes you uncomfortable, you definitely want to tread lightly with this fic.
> 
> secondly: there are very brief mentions of patrick with OCs, before he's with jonny. there's an orgy tag, but neither patrick nor jonny participate in it - at least not with others!
> 
> also, i wrote this starting in october last year, so there are blackhawks players in this fic who have since been traded. (/forever sad about sharpy and shawzy)
> 
> and now i have an entire city of people to thank:
> 
> to pali - this fic would never even have happened without you, so THANK YOU! this is for you;  
> my team - clayisforgirls, linsky, aohatsu, whiskeykisses, a million hugs and thanks for all the cheerleading and support! special shoutout to linsky for going over my fic and giving me all the critique and suggestions i needed;  
> svmadelyn - for organising this challenge, and kicking my ass into finishing this thing that i've been writing for 9 months;  
> starafar - a huge, HUGE thank you, for making the awesome, amazing graphics in the story, and staying up past 1 a.m. to do them!  
> MajaLi - for helping me read through and generally listening to me whine and providing cuddles;  
> and last but not least, the Group - you guys know who you are! huge thanks for all the help and cheerleading! 
> 
> this would never have been done without all of you, thank you all so so much!
> 
> title from smooth, by rob thomas and santana.

Kruger's telling Seabs about the new slave he's just acquired over the weekend.

"How is she?" Jonny hears Seabs ask.

"Great," Krugs says. "She's very sweet, and so obliging. And she's Swedish, too. Her last owner brought her to America, had to sell her when he got ill."

There's a pause which Jonny surmises is Krugs showing Seabs a photo of his slave. Seabs lets out a long whistle.

"Yeah, I see why you like her," he says. "Kind of a waste to use a pretty girl like that for a house slave, though."

"What? No, she's not for the household things, I've got another slave for that. No, this one's a pleasure slave."

A chorus of wolf whistles and catcalls breaks out in the locker room.

"So proud of you, Krugs!" Bicks calls from across the room. "Finally took the plunge!"

"You know who else needs a pleasure slave?" Shawsy says, and Jonny braces himself for the inevitable impact. "Captain Stick-up-his-ass, that's who."

Jonny frowns as the catcalls get louder. "Shut your face, Shawsy, and suit up," he says, ignoring everyone else, pulling his pads on.

\---

The thing is - Jonny's never even thought of owning a pleasure slave.

He likes his privacy, likes having his house to himself without the presence of a strange person there, even though he knows slaves learn to be quiet and unobtrusive unless needed. He's got a cleaning slave on a timeshare, through an agency, who comes in three times a week to tidy, do laundry, and iron his shirts. He eats out too often and gets his meals delivered the rest of the time. His house is too big for just one person, he knows - the guys rib him regularly about that - but he doesn't _need_ a house slave.

But the idea of a pleasure slave - of buying and owning and feeding a person meant just for leisure, for pleasure - it just sounds like a complete waste of money to Jonny. Why would he need someone for that, when he can easily go out and pick up? He really doesn't need one, he thinks. He's the captain of an NHL team, he has no problems hooking up. 

He thinks about the last hookup he had as he's lacing up his skates, and he can't - he can't remember her. He can't remember when it was. He can't remember if they even were a her, or a him.

Well, fuck.

\---

Kruger has always been a solid, dependable player. He's the kind of guy you can count on to grind down, but not really the sort you look to when you want some excitement and flair. Which is why Jonny's mouth falls open on the bench when Krugs manages to collect the puck in the defensive zone, tears down the ice, dekes around a hulking d-man, and scores a highlight-reel wrister over the goalie's glove, top-shelf.

Krugs also records an assist. His line is on fucking fire all night.

"Get a pleasure slave," Krugs tells him later that night, grinning, when Jonny gives him a fistbump and tells him he did well.

"Fuck off," Jonny says gruffly.

\---

The problem - the problem is that he can't stop thinking about it, now.

Krugs comes into practice every morning looking relaxed and delighted. Their penalty kill has never been better, and Krugs' faceoff percentage creeps up to nudge at 58%, surpassing every other season he's had. Jonny overhears him telling Shawsy or whoever about the "fucking fantastic blowjob last night, she swallowed it down and kept it in her throat like she was starving".

And Jonny on the other hand - Jonny is playing like shit. He hasn't recorded a point in five games straight. He's grumpy and bad-tempered, and even Hossa avoids him now, except he also occasionally sends him stares that convey _I was wide open, what's wrong with you, why didn't you pass the puck to me_ , and _Stop scaring the rookies with your foul mood_.

"Get your shit together," Q tells him.

"Get laid," Bicks says.

"Get a pleasure slave, it'll help," Panarin offers, which - what?

Turns out Panarin had bought one two months into his first season. A guy, tall and lean, with brown hair and a nice smile. Panarin's constant smiles since he'd come to America make a lot more sense now.

\---

Which is how Jonny finds himself at an auction a few weeks later, held by a trader who had come highly recommended by Bowman himself. It had been quite possibly the most mortifying moment of Jonny's life, to have his GM call him into his office, shove a namecard at him, and say, "I heard you're looking for a pleasure slave – get in touch with this guy, he'll get you one, and his goods are always top quality."

Jonny had gaped a little at him, namecard crushed in his hand.

But later, when he was home, he'd taken it out of his pocket and called the guy on it – a trader whom the Bowman family had used for years – and was told, yeah, there's a pleasure auction coming up in a month, could you pay this incredibly exorbitant amount for the entrance fee and he'll send Jonny an invite?

Jonny had bit his tongue and paid up. It would be nothing compared to what he'd have to pay if he really wanted a pleasure slave.

The auction itself takes place in a large suite at the Trump Tower; it's surprisingly plush and luxurious, pale eggshell silk wallpaper, stuffed armchairs dotting the carpeted floor, facing a raised dais with a soft black couch on it. Jonny has his coat taken by a hovering slave – he's marked by a leather slave cuff on one wrist – and given a glass of champagne by another, before being guided to one of the armchairs nearest the dais.

Jonny's never been to an auction before; they're not too common, usually only held for the slaves of higher quality who are not meant for menial work or daily chores, and he's still trying to talk himself into – or out of, he's still not sure – buying a slave, so he's deep in thought and nursing at his glass when a man steps up on the dais, just at the edge of Jonny's peripheral vision, and he looks up, blinking when he realizes the room's now full, all the armchairs taken. He takes a quick look around; most of the attendees are men, dressed in rich suits with gold watches, but there are some women there too, slaves hovering around them, lighting cigarettes or fetching drinks.

The man on the dais announces that he's the auctioneer for today, and tells them that there are four slaves up for auction – three males, one female.

"We'll proceed with a demonstration of the usability of the slaves, and after each one, before we open the bidding, interested bidders may come up and ask questions or inspect them yourselves."

Demonstration – what? Jonny's confused. How in the world are they supposed to demonstrate –

And then his thoughts die off in his mind, because they're bringing the first slave out of an adjoining room and onto the dais, a hulking guy with huge arms and thick thighs. Jonny can see a couple of the women in the room sit up straighter as they eye him. He's dressed in nothing but a short robe, and when a slave hurries up to untie his belt and remove the robe from his shoulders, Jonny is suddenly very aware of what the demonstration will be.

The same slave strips himself efficiently and then folds himself over the couch, and the slave to be auctioned takes his place behind him, large meaty hands closing around the other slave's hips.

And then – then follows the most excruciating thirty minutes of Jonny's life, as the auctioneer begins, in the most matter-of-fact, bored voice Jonny's ever heard, to give a blow-by-blow account of – of everything going on. From the way the slave knows how to suck and finger and lick and fuck, to the size of his (rather impressive, even Jonny can admit that through the burn of embarrassment flushing through him) dick and fingers.

Jesus fuck. This was absolutely not what Jonny was expecting when he'd first thought to himself that _maybe_ he should consider getting a pleasure slave.

He takes another look around quickly – most people are acting like this is a perfectly normal slave auction. Some aren’t even paying attention anymore to the loud slap of skin, or the muffled moans coming from the slave getting fucked. Most of them are chatting to each other – it's mainly the ladies who look pleased by this little performance.

 _Calm down,_ he tells himself sternly. _Don't go acting like some country hick._

The slave being auctioned comes with a snap of his hips, entire body locking in place and muscles standing out, before he gently disengages, breathing heavily.

"Interested bidders, please come forth," the auctioneer calls.

Three ladies and two men move forward onto the dais; Jonny can see them surrounding the slave, feeling his arms and glutes. One lady calls for a small towel and when she gets one, delicately uses it to lift his softening dick and inspect it. Jonny swallows and tosses back the rest of his champagne before gesturing for another glass.

Maybe this isn't the right place for him – maybe he should just order a slave from an agency, quality be damned. There _are_ reputable agencies which place high-quality slaves. But he can't just walk out in the middle of an auction; it'd be too embarrassing if Jonathan Toews, Blackhawks captain, is too soft to sit through a slave auction.

The bidding starts just as Jonny's new glass of champagne is brought to him, and this Jonny pays attention to. He winces, though, as the bids go higher and higher. The slave finally goes for $350,000, and Jonny is stuck for a moment thinking of how that's like, a third of his monthly salary, fuck. He has no idea what possessed him to come here.

The second slave who's led out is a girl in her mid-twenties, slender and fair and red-haired. Jonny doesn't even bother watching as another slave fucks her on the couch with a dildo, as her legs splay open until they're quivering in the air and little gasps are emitting from her mouth until she comes. He's not in the market for a female, he's already decided that.

The girl goes for a higher price - $520,000, and Jonny looks up just in time to see the third slave stepping up on the dais. He's looking at Jonny as he does it, for some reason, head tilted just slightly, and Jonny – there's really no other way to describe it – Jonny's breath just catches in his throat.

The slave is a little on the small side, but Jonny's never minded that. Short golden blond hair that curls, huge blue eyes that light on Jonny and don’t look away for several long seconds, and lovely, high cheekbones that accentuate how absolutely pretty he is. If Jonny was at a club and ran into this guy, he'd probably take him home at the end of the night, that's how much his type this slave is.

Jonny watches as he's stripped. The slave is fairly short, but his body's nice and compact, broad shoulders and bunching trapezoids narrowing into slim hips. His abdomen is all thick, solid muscle, and when he turns a slow circle as the auctioneer tells him to, his ass is perfect, pert and flawlessly rounded. Even his dick is pretty, lying pink and soft against his thigh.

Jonny's so caught up in staring at him that he jumps a little when another burly slave gets on the dais, holding a couple of large dildos. He puts his hands on the slave's shoulders, and presses a little, enough for him to fold gracefully to his knees. And – yeah – now Jonny's going to watch him take a cock, he'd been so distracted he'd forgotten about that part.

The auctioneer is reading from his sheet of paper. "Patrick Timothy Kane, born in Buffalo, New York. Twenty-two years old. Previously owned by a married couple – they had to sell him when they found out that the wife was pregnant, and had to move away from Chicago."

The slave – Patrick – is still on his knees, but his hands have come up to grip the other slave's thighs for balance, and he's looking up and licking his lips. Jonny notices, rather incongruously, that Patrick has beautifully long eyelashes.

"His previous owners have indicated that he's excellent at fellatio, and – ah, here we can see – "

Jonny watches, mesmerized, as the other slave nudges the head of the dildo at Patrick's full lips, and Patrick's mouth falls open as if on command, sucking it in.

The auctioneer is still talking in that bored voice, but Jonny's tuned him out – all he can hear are the little sighs and sounds Patrick's making as he gets the dildo shoved deeper and deeper into his mouth, until Jonny can see strings of spit drooling down his chin as the other slave works it in. It's a surprisingly short amount of time before Patrick gets it all in his mouth, has his nose pressed against the base, blinking up with his wide blue eyes and looking like he wants more.

Patrick's mouth is fucking obscene, all red and wet and stretched around a wide toy. He's not even choking or evincing any discomfort.

The auctioneer says something about Patrick's deep throating, and the other slave begins to fuck the toy in and out of his mouth, deep. Jonny can see how hard Patrick is, his cock bobbing as he works his head. Whatever it is, Patrick clearly isn't putting on an act about liking to suck cock.

It goes on for a while until the guy pulls the toy out of Patrick's mouth – Jonny catches a glimpse of his tongue coming out to chase it – and guides him to stand up and bend over the couch.

"He likes having things in him," the auctioneer says. "His previous owners have used all manner of toys on him – dildos, plugs, beads, eggs – he takes them well."

On the couch, the big slave's started fingering Patrick open, and Patrick's shuddering and gasping, face and chest flushed red. Jonny can feel himself go red in sympathy, and at the thought that's flashed unbidden through his mind of himself fingering Patrick, of sliding a plug inside him and keeping him loose and ready for Jonny.

By the time the other slave is done and is pushing another lubed-up dildo in Patrick, Jonny's fully hard in his pants, just watching the way Patrick writhes and works to take the toy. He shuts his eyes when the guy's got the dildo in all the way to its flared base, teeth sinking into his pink lower lip and leaving a soft pale indentation. He's so pretty it hurts. His cock is still hard and red, just from having a dick inside him.

The slave pulls Patrick upright halfway so everyone can look at his red face, his half-closed eyes, that pink mouth softly moaning. Patrick's eyes open just enough to take in the room watching him, and he whimpers a little, turning his face away and bringing one arm up so he can hide in the crook of his elbow.

"No," the auctioneer says, "let them see – " and the slave fucking Patrick with the dildo stops just long enough to tug his arm down and pin it between their bodies before he clasps a hand on Patrick's jaw, turning him so he's facing Jonny.

Patrick's mouth drops open as Jonny licks his lips, watching him, and then he says, "Fuck" – the first word Jonny's heard him say, before he twists his free arm down to touch himself. His eyes are still locked on Jonny's when he finally comes, spurting into his palm, body seizing around the toy deep inside him.

Jonny is so fucking hard, he has no idea how he's going to walk. He pinches his thigh, hard, to calm himself down, as Patrick shakily gets to his feet and stands before them again, head bowed, as another slave wipes him down carefully and brushes his disheveled curls back. Jonny almost wishes he didn’t – he likes the look of Patrick's curls wild and mussed from sex.

"Any interested bidders?" the auctioneer asks.

Jonny surreptitiously adjusts himself and stands; but so do two other men, and he can’t help but glower at them as they move towards Patrick.

Patrick, though – Patrick's only looking at Jonny, and as Jonny nears him, he tilts his head up and gives him the tiniest smile, so small and fleeting that Jonny would have missed it, if he hadn’t been looking at Patrick's face.

Jonny bites his lip to stop himself from smiling back, and instead runs a hand down over Patrick's broad chest and solid core, stroking over a peaked nipple at the same time and listening to Patrick's breath hitch.

"Your name?" he asks.

It's not really necessary, since he already knows – but he remembers Bicks advising him that he had to check that the slave understood him and wasn't, like, slow or anything like that, because some unscrupulous traders sometimes passed off defects with a pretty face. Jonny's pretty certain a trader Bowman uses wouldn't do that, but well, never hurts to be sure.

"I'm Patrick Kane," Patrick replies; his voice is deep and a little raspy, used. "Mr. Toews."

Well. Patrick knows exactly who he is, which makes it pretty likely that he watches and knows hockey. Jonny's inexplicably pleased by that.

He circles behind Patrick; the other two men take his place in front of Patrick, fondling him roughly, nothing at all like Jonny's gentle strokes. Jonny frowns, but doesn’t say anything; Patrick's not _his_ to say anything about, yet. He cups Patrick's butt gently in his hands, feeling the way it spills into his palms, and asks, "May I?"

Patrick takes a deep, shocked breath, like no one's ever asked him that before, and nods. Only then does Jonny spread him open a little to look at his hole, a little puffy but small and pink, and Jonny watches as Patrick tenses up, tiny hole clenching tight and his glutes tightening in Jonny's hands.

"Perfect," Jonny whispers – he's not even aware he's said it out loud until Patrick looks over his shoulder at him and actually _smiles_ , a little shy, but pleased. 

He has dimples. Jonny is so fucked.

One of the men standing in front of Patrick presses his fingers roughly to his lips; Patrick flinches just the smallest bit, and keeps his mouth resolutely shut. The man mutters something under his breath, looking displeased, and looks like he's going to try to shove his fingers into Patrick's mouth, but Jonny moves around Patrick again and jostles the man out of the way, acting like he's doing it completely on accident.

Patrick's mouth twitches just slightly as he looks up at Jonny, and Jonny likes that it's been a bare few minutes and he can already read the nuances of Patrick's expressions. He can tell, too, that Patrick's not used to being roughly handled, was probably treated well by whoever his previous owners were, because he clearly dislikes the way the other two men are prodding at him, but almost leans into Jonny's touch when Jonny gently cups his chin in his hand.

"You're quite pretty," Jonny says in a low voice, as he runs a thumb over Patrick's soft full lips.

He's still wondering if Patrick's going to go ramrod stiff like he did with the other two bidders when Patrick actually lets his mouth drop open a little, just enough to suck the tip of Jonny's thumb in. He flicks his tongue against it once, warm and wet, before letting it slip out of his mouth and blinking up at Jonny. They’re standing so close together, with the two men now behind Patrick and Jonny's body blocking Patrick from view of the audience that Jonny's reasonably sure no one saw that little performance.

"Only _quite_?" Patrick asks, eyes gleaming.

Jonny runs his thumb, now wet with Patrick's spit, one last time over the lush curve of Patrick's bottom lip, and smiles.

He steps away from Patrick, feeling oddly gratified that Patrick's eyes follow him immediately even as his body remains stock still and proudly on display, as Jonny walks all the way to where the auctioneer is, and quietly asks him for a quick rundown on Patrick's medical and sexual history.

The auctioneer is all too glad to show Jonny a full medical report, dated just a week ago, marked with Patrick's height, weight, eyesight, kidney levels, blood counts, everything. Jonny's seen enough medicals in hockey to make sense out of what he's seeing, and Patrick is as healthy as can be. Plus, when he flips to the page behind, it's rows of STI panels, and Patrick is clean.

His sexual history is rather more brief, indicating that he's bisexual, that he's only ever been owned by the one couple who sold him, and he was a virgin when they'd first bought him.

All in all, it's not too bad – Jonny knows, generally, that used pleasure slaves sell for cheaper than untouched ones, but neither of the slaves that went before Patrick were unused, and they still sold for high prices, which means that this trader only deals in quality. Jonny's prepared to spend more than that, if it means he can get some like Patrick.

He returns to his chair, picking up the fresh glass of champagne that's appeared next to him, and looks up to see Patrick still watching him. There's a dark hint of fear in those blue eyes, as if he's afraid Jonny's changed his mind and decided not to buy him, and Jonny – he likes it. He likes that Patrick is so obviously wanting Jonny to take him; he's paying absolutely no attention to anyone else.

The auctioneer calls for quiet, and bangs his gavel on the podium. "Let the bidding begin – base price is set at $300,000," he says, and Jonny lifts a hand.

\---

There are only two men bidding against Jonny – the same two who were inspecting Patrick – but one of them drops out pretty quickly once the price inches past $500,000. The other guy is still going strong though, glaring at Jonny like he's just pissed on his Lanvin suit.

Jonny gives absolutely no fucks, and raises his hand calmly to bring the bid up to $700,000.

By the time it hits $780,000, Patrick is looking stunned on the dais, throat working and eyes wide as he stares at the auctioneer calling out bids. Jonny's pretty sure auctions don't usually go past $700,000, and almost never for a used pleasure slave. Jonny's rival, though, is starting to look twitchy – and when he calls for $800,000, he says out loud, "That's my final bid."

"Final bid, sir?" the auctioneer repeats.

"Final," the man says. "No pleasure slave is worth that much, and even someone inexperienced like him – " he jerks his chin at Jonny – "ought to know that it's a complete waste of money going above that. Does he even have the money for it?"

A titter ripples through the room, and on the dais Patrick's eyes flutter shut and he takes a deep breath, like he's – like he's preparing for himself to go to that odious man, and Jonny simply _cannot_ have that.

"Will you bid, sir?" the auctioneer asks, gesturing at Jonny. "If you do not, the slave will be sold to the other gentleman."

"I will bid," Jonny says, his voice carrying loud and clear. "$880,000."

The room gasps; Patrick's eyes fly open and he gasps as well, a sound that Jonny catches before Patrick tamps it down.

Jonny turns slowly to look at the other man, and whether it's the strength of his glare or the fact that $880,000 is a frankly ridiculous amount, the man settles back into his armchair, and shakes his head.

"Patrick Timothy Kane," the auctioneer intones. "Sold, to Mr. Jonathan Toews."

\---

Jonny's ushered to yet another side room – with Patrick trailing behind – for the administrative paperwork. It's only when he's seated at a mahogany desk and an owner's contract is placed in front of him with his name, address, and amount paid already typed in at the top, that he starts feeling faint. What has he done? What the fuck – what was he thinking, blowing more than a month's worth of his earnings on a pleasure slave?

He looks behind him for Patrick, but he's not in the room. The trader smiles. "Your slave's just gone to get washed and dressed, Mr. Toews. He'll be back in no time. Now, before I go through the clauses, would you like this sent to a legal representative?"

"Uh," Jonny says. _His slave._ Shit. He hadn't thought of the paperwork; he hadn't even thought he'd buy a slave in his first auction at all. "Yeah, sure – just let me speak to her."

He calls his lawyer, who thankfully picks up, and it takes everything he has in him to tell her what he'd just done without stammering or stuttering.

"Did I hear this right?" she asks him. "You bought a _pleasure_ slave?"

"Yes," Jonny says through gritted teeth. "And they want me to sign the owner's agreement, so will you please look through it before I do something like sign half my future earnings away?"

"I'm sure that won't happen," Anne replies, in a voice that makes it very clear that she thinks Jonny's being a child, "but sure, email it over now."

He gives Anne's email to the trader and the contract is scanned over. Jonny takes the time to look it through as well – it's not like he knows what an owner's agreement looks like, but there isn't anything about him signing over his future earnings, at least. It contains stipulations that he's not allowed to hurt his slave outside of sex play, or do anything that will cause permanent damage. There's a stern warning that damaging or disfiguring pleasure slaves will render them inadmissible for future sales, and have legal ramifications for the owners.

That's all well and good for Jonny; it's not like he has any intention to hurt Patrick, obviously, he's not a psychopath.

Anne texts him back thirty minutes later with an _All good. Sign away, Jonathan! And enjoy :)_ Ugh.

He picks up the fountain pen on the desk, flips to the last page, and with only a second of hesitation, he signs.

And that's it. He has a pleasure slave. Bought and kept purely for his sexual pleasure.

\---

The trader gives him more documents – copies of Patrick's medical history and the owner's contract, and several forms and checklists filled out by Patrick before he was auctioned. A quick look at them tells Jonny that they're checklists for sex play – he catches a glimpse of **Anal plugs (large)** and an emphatic **YES** next to it, written in block letters. Jonny can feel his face start to heat up again, so he shoves all the papers into a manila envelope the trader hands to him and blurts out, "Is my – is Patrick ready?"

As if on cue, the door opens, and Patrick steps into the room.

He's a little pink in the face, and dressed in a fine suit – charcoal grey worsted, lilac linen shirt, and a deep maroon tie with a tie clip. The clip looks like it could be platinum. Jonny has no idea how a pleasure slave can afford such a trinket, but more than that, the entire look _works_ on Patrick. He looks incredible. He looks like he wouldn't be out of place on a red carpet at a film festival, and Jonny's mouth feels dry just looking at him, at the way his broad shoulders fill out the suit.

Patrick maybe catches him staring at the tie clip a little too long, lost in his own thoughts, and he reaches up to finger it uncertainly. "Is it – this was a gift, from my previous owners," he says hesitantly. "If you mind it, I can remove it – "

His fingers are fiddling at the clip as if he wants to undo it, and Jonny comes to himself just in time to say, "No. It's – it suits you. You may keep it."

"Thank you," Patrick says, wetting his lips, and the look he gives Jonny is so endearingly relieved and grateful that Jonny's glad he reacted as he did.

He can't help it, has to go up to Patrick and smooth the suit across his shoulders. His tie's a little crooked, and Jonny straightens it, before running his hands over the front of the suit, feeling fine fabric stretched over solid muscle. When he glances down, though, he sees the brown leather of a slave cuff, tight around Patrick's left wrist.

He doesn't like it. It clashes with the suit. It clashes with Patrick's entire look – and besides, he can buy another one far nicer.

"Can you – " he motions at the cuff – "take this off him? I'd prefer to get him my own."

"Of course, Mr. Toews," the trader says, all obsequious solicitousness, and hurries over to unclip the cuff from around Patrick's wrist. Patrick rotates his wrist a little, like it's aching, and Jonny reminds himself to get his own doctor to look at Patrick. His medical report had indicated a previous scaphoid fracture in the left wrist that had healed well, but Jonny needs to make sure.

When he looks at Patrick now, he looks completely unlike what he really is, without the cuff – he could pass for a businessman, on his way to a meeting. He still looks amazing.

"I'm done here," he says, glancing at the trader, who nods in agreement. "So – come on."

He takes a step forward, but Patrick stays frozen in place, unmoving. Jonny hesitates before holding out his arm; and a few seconds later, Patrick slowly takes it, fingers winding around Jonny's wrist.

"Come on, Patrick," he says, swallowing at the enormity of it. "Let's go home."

\---

It's a short drive from Trump Tower to his home, but Jonny doesn't say anything at all as he drives, and neither does Patrick. Patrick keeps his head turned away to look out of the window, so each time Jonny glances over all he can see are the mop of curls at the back of Patrick's head, the elegant curve of his cheek, and the long upsweep of his eyelashes.

Patrick really is too fucking pretty.

They pass the drive in silence until he pulls into his driveway. Patrick doesn't move to get out of the car until Jonny does, and even so he pulls himself out slowly, like he's reluctant to do it. He shades his eyes against the glare of the evening sun and looks up at the house; Jonny can't see his expression, but he can't help wondering what Patrick's thinking about the house he'll likely spend his next few years in.

Then Patrick drops his hand and turns back to the car to get his bag – a pitifully small one containing only a few clothes and gifts given to him by his previous owners, because the trader seemed to think slaves ought to dress according to the wishes of whoever owned them at a given period in time – and Jonny hurries to unlock the door and show Patrick in.

Patrick's still standing in the middle of the living room when Jonny comes back from turning the lights on, and he looks so small and lost now, even in that smart suit, his face wan and drawn. It takes Jonny a couple of seconds to realize that, yeah, Patrick's probably been awake and prepared for the auction since the early hours of the morning, and then had to go through being fucked in front of an audience, prodded and fondled, and sold off, all in the space of a few hours.

"You must be tired," Jonny says. "You can have the guest room – " and he starts climbing the stairs, but stops halfway when he realizes Patrick's still standing in the same spot, looking up at him with his mouth hanging open.

"What is it?" he asks.

Patrick hesitates for a moment; his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and then he says, "Don't you – most pleasure slaves sleep in their owners' bedrooms. So that we can be – ready, if you need us."

And yeah, no – Jonny most certainly does not need to be reminded of all the ways Patrick can be ready for him, now that he _belongs_ to Jonny, wholly and legally; not when he looks like that, solemn and pale. Jonny shakes his head.

"I think – I'll do things a little differently, from what you're used to," he says gruffly. "Come on, I'll show you where the room is."

Only, when Jonny swings open the door to his guest bedroom, Patrick finally following at his heels, he remembers too late that his guest room is completely not ready. He hadn't expected to get a slave at his first auction. The bed's stripped bare, and the mattress is smaller than his own king-size, so he doesn't even have sheets to put on it. There's a wardrobe and an ensuite bathroom, but no other furniture, and the bathroom hasn't been used since Jonny moved into the house a few months ago.

"Uh," Jonny says.

Patrick's still standing silently behind him, but his eyebrows are arched in question, so Jonny turns to face him, shutting the door. "I didn't get the room ready. I'm sorry, I guess – you can sleep in my room for now, and we'll go shopping soon, get sheets and whatever you need."

Patrick's eyebrows fly higher at his apology and at the _we_ ; Jonny can feel himself flush red. He knows it's not the usual way to treat a slave, but he just can't help it. Let it never be said that Jonathan Toews wasn't brought up well by his mother, okay.

But Patrick doesn't remark on it ( _can't_ anyway, Jonny's brain reminds him), just nods in acquiescence and follows when Jonny leads him up the stairs again and to the master bedroom.

When Jonny had bought the house and put an interior designer on it, he requested that the three bedrooms on the third level be combined, walls knocked down, to make an enormous master suite. He has a balcony, and stairs going up to his roof garden, directly from the suite. He even has a tiny kitchenette. The guys gave him some shit about that, telling him that he shouldn't have got such a huge house if he was just going to be living forever on the third floor – but Jonny had had some vague ideas about kids and future in-laws and all that jazz, and wanted a big house to accommodate all these future plans of his.

Now, though – now he's got no relationship, no foreseeable kids or spouses, and a pleasure slave. Fuck his life, honestly.

He probably looks super stern or something, maybe grimacing at his thoughts, because Patrick's staring at him and subtly edging away a little.

"So, uh – here it is," Jonny says, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm. "Bathroom's over there, you can do whatever you need. Use whatever you find in there, I don't care. You can chuck your stuff in my wardrobe, I'm sure you can find space – and take a nap. Sleep as long as you need."

He points at his bed, and winces a little, because it's unmade, sheets rumpled and pillows everywhere.

"It's clean," Jonny says lamely. "It's just – my house slave isn't due in until the weekend, and I don't really bother making the sheets on the days she doesn't come in."

Patrick just nods as if this is all perfectly normal – and perhaps lazy-as-fuck owners really are a dime a dozen – but Jonny feels awkward now, because he hadn't needed to explain his cleaning habits to his slave. He doesn't need to explain any of his decisions and choices to Patrick, and definitely doesn't need to apologise for anything.

It's going to take him some time to adjust, he thinks unhappily, and then says aloud, "I'm heading downstairs now. I'll order takeout, you can come down and eat when you're done napping, or whatever. Thai okay?"

And then he mentally facepalms – because, god, _no need_ to ask for his slave's opinion.

Patrick, however, just shrugs and says, "I like Thai", like being asked his opinion on things is something he's used to, before beginning to unbutton his suit jacket, unfazed and uncaring that Jonny's still there, and Jonny makes his escape downstairs.

\---

That first night is… horrendously awkward, at least at the start.

Jonny tries very hard not to allow it to be. He'd allowed Patrick to load the dishwasher after they were done with dinner – and Patrick had done it without complaint, even though he's not a house slave – and then wandered upstairs to get ready for bed while Patrick was still shuffling around in the kitchen.

He brushes his teeth and steps out, and there Patrick is, sitting on the edge of the bed. He looks a little pale, but nods when Jonny tells him to go brush his teeth.

Jonny's stripped down to his boxers, turned the lights off – he usually sleeps nude, but he's just _not_ going to do that right now – and slid under the covers on the left side of the bed when Patrick comes out. Patrick starts a little at the sight of his bare torso, sheets tangled around his waist, and toys uncertainly at the hem of his t-shirt. The shirt belongs to Jonny – it's a soft red Team Canada one that's a little stretched from being worn too many times – and the widened neckline droops low, exposing the sharp jut of Patrick's clavicles.

Jonny waits patiently – Patrick looks like something's on the tip of his tongue – when Patrick finally says, "How do you want me?"

And – what? Jonny blinks at him, and hopes he looks as confused as he feels.

Some of that must get through to Patrick, because now he looks just as bewildered, and his tongue darts out to lick his lips again. He does that a lot, Jonny's noticed in these last few short hours, like it's a nervous tic, or an instinctual response. He'd be lying if he said he didn't notice how much Patrick licked or chewed at his lush, pink lips. And then he says, plainly, "I mean – how do you like me, Mr. Toews? Do you want me to keep my shirt on or off? Do you want me on my stomach or on my knees? Things like these. You have to tell me."

Clearly, Patrick's caught on to how inexperienced Jonny is at this, and is nice enough to want to guide him through _How To Treat And Use Your Pleasure Slave 101_. Except that Patrick's perfect mouth shaping itself around _do you want me on my knees_ is already making Jonny go a little stiff in his boxers. Christ, it's definitely been too long since he got laid.

But Jonny's also not enough of an asshole to use his new slave when he's barely settled in, when he's gone through enough for an afternoon, even though he's well within his rights to; so he just shrugs and says, "I don't – not tonight, okay? Just sleep."

Patrick's blue eyes widen, and Jonny adds, "Also, for the love of God, call me Jonny. Mr. Toews makes me sound like my dad, and that's just not conducive to a sexual relationship."

To his surprise, Patrick starts laughing – he grins wide, showing a row of perfect white teeth, and there his dimples are again, deep in his cheeks. Jonny looks at him standing there and laughing, eyes sparkling, and thinks: _I could get used to this._

"Come on," Jonny says, lifting the covers. "I've got practice in the morning, so I can't sleep late."

At that, Patrick slides into the bed without any further hesitation. He doesn't try to keep himself at the edge of the bed to avoid Jonny, but he doesn't sleep close enough to touch him either, just arranges himself easily and then turns on his right so his back is to Jonny.

Jonny looks at the golden curls fluffed out on _his_ pillow, Patrick's broad shoulders in _his_ shirt, and caves just enough to grip Patrick's hip gently, stroking over the curve of it, before settling his hand on the dip of Patrick's waist.

"Goodnight," he says.

Patrick mumbles something soft that could have been a response, but Jonny's already sliding into sleep despite the novelty of having another body in his bed.

\---

Jonny wakes to his alarm and to the entirely unfamiliar but not unwelcome feel of a body pressed against his from chest to thigh. It's a good body too, solid and male, and Jonny's stiff dick is nestled between the soft firmness of the person's thighs. Jonny cracks one eye open while trying to recall who he went home with last night, and is greeted by the sight of blond curls, long lashes splayed out against a sharp cheekbone.

Oh. Shit. _Patrick._ 880,000 dollars thrown at him. The guys are going to ream him a new one.

Sometime during the night, they must have migrated towards one another, because Jonny's arm is slung across Patrick's waist, and Patrick's curled up, burrowing into Jonny's naked chest. Jonny is fairly sure he's drooling on it. And Jonny's cock is fitted neatly into the warm crease of thigh beneath Patrick's balls.

He could do it. Now would be a good time to do it. Patrick's had a night's rest; Jonny can use him without any qualms. It'd be so easy to just rut into the inviting cradle of Patrick's thighs until he spills all over them, or even to wake Patrick up, slide his cock into the hot tightness of Patrick's mouth, make Patrick work around his cock until he comes. So easy – and this is what Patrick's for. This is what Jonny bought him for.

Jonny allows himself exactly five seconds to think about fucking Patrick's mouth, how his lips would look wrapped around his cock, before regretfully disengaging from him and padding into the bathroom to eke out a roundly disappointing orgasm with just his hand and some soap, while his pleasure slave sleeps outside in his bed.

Sometimes Jonny wishes he were more of an asshole.

\---

"Did you get one?" Bicks asks as they're changing into their gear.

Jonny nods tersely and hopes that he's conveying _I don't want to talk about it_ with every line of his face. His team being, well, his team, they don't give up.

"You did? Show us a pic!" Krugs says, to which Jonny snorts. He's not like Krugs, showing off pictures of his pleasure slave to all and sundry. He doesn't even have a photo of Patrick.

"What's her name?" Shawsy asks.

"Why do you want to know?" Jonny shoots back.

"Why can't I know?" Shawsy says, looking honestly bewildered – and it's true, everyone shares anecdotes and stuff about their pleasure slaves all the time, it's not a big deal. Shawsy constantly talks about the girl he bought for himself and Chaunette to share.

"… Patrick," Jonny says.

The room erupts in loud _oooooh_ 's and Jonny tries to shut it out by jamming his helmet over his head. It doesn't work.

"How much did you pay for him?" Desjardins wants to know, and this – this Jonny is _not_ mentioning.

"None of your business," he snaps.

Q stomps into the room, then, and jerks a thumb over his shoulder, signaling them to get out on the ice. Before anyone can move, he turns to Jonny and says, in a loud booming voice, "Jon, I heard from the boss that you bought your pleasure slave for over $800,000? Is your head screwed on right, son? Do I need to get the doctors to check you for a concussion?"

"Jesus Christ," Jonny says, at the same time a cacophony of gasps echoes through the room and Duncs says: "Holy shit, Jonny."

Crow's mouth has fallen open. "Wow, seriously, Jonny? Is his ass made of gold?"

"Is his ass made of gold that vibrates when you get your dick in?" Hammer asks.

"You think about my dick a lot?" Jonny snaps.

Seabs, who has remained silent all this while, says, "Is his mouth made of gold _and_ a vacuum?" and then cracks up.

All of them are dead to Jonny.

He escapes from the locker room and gets out on the ice, and when the team finally shuffles out, he's shooting pucks so viciously that everyone actually gets the message and steers clear of him. Q's still eyeing him suspiciously, but he skates as hard as he can, just to prove that he's not concussed, and when practice is done he gets the hell out of there without even showering.

Stinking up his car is a small price to pay to avoid any more pointed questions about his head, or teasing about how tight Patrick's ass is. Fuck, he doesn't even know a thing about Patrick's ass. He needs to rectify that.

\---

Truth be told, though, when he enters his home and finds no sign of Patrick on the first floor or the kitchen – not even cleaned dishes drying – his first thought is that, well, Patrick's run away.

He bursts into the master suite, intending to see if Patrick had taken any money or valuables, when the sight of Patrick sitting on the day bed by the windows stops him in his tracks. Patrick's sitting ramrod straight; the sheets on the bed are barely disturbed, as if he's been sitting like this all day, unmoving and inert.

He raises his eyes to Jonny, and all the anger and panic roiling in Jonny eases like a knot being slipped open at the sight of Patrick, face pale and dark shadows under his eyes like bruises. It's terrible how bad he looks, despite having had a full night's sleep. He'd even still been asleep when Jonny had left the house for practice. And of course, of course he wouldn't have run away, what was Jonny thinking; he's got nowhere to go, it's illegal for those in debt bondage to leave their owners without permission, he's got nothing but the clothes on his back and even those belong to Jonny –

"What have you been doing?" Jonny asks.

Patrick brings up a hand to stroke it across his mouth; he looks tired, and dazed, like he's not sure where he is. "Just sitting here." His voice is raspy, like he's just woken up.

"Did you just wake up?"

"No," Patrick says. "I got up around nine-thirty, and you were already gone by then, so I sat here."

Jonny blinks confusedly at him for a moment before it hits him suddenly, everything coalescing into something that adds up and makes sense. He remembers Patrick telling him the night before _you have to tell me what to do_ ; the times he'd seen the other guys bring their own pleasure slaves to parties and telling them to sit, stand, eat; and on impulse he strides over, cupping Patrick's jaw in one hand and lifting his face, in a mirror of what he'd done at Patrick's auction. There's a hint of ginger stubble scraping across his palm.

"Patrick," he says, "you don't ever – you don't need to get my permission, or orders, for whatever. If you're hungry, go to the kitchen and help yourself to food. If you're tired, sleep; if you want to watch TV, the remote's right there. I don't expect you to sit and wait for me, all fucking day."

Patrick opens his mouth, alarm written all over his face, and Jonny thinks he might be trying to apologise – for _waiting_ , god, he's going to need to train this boy out of whatever he was taught by his previous owners – and presses a thumb against his lips, cutting him off. His mouth is as soft as it looks; Jonny spends a good few seconds just looking at the yielding indentation his thumb makes in the tender flesh of it, before speaking again.

"I don't – I'm not that kind of person," he says. "I know I'm supposed to tell you to do this or that, but I just – I can't. I'm going to let you do whatever you want in this house as long as you live here, and if there's something I think you're overstepping on, I'll tell you, but other than that – I don't care what you do. Agreed?"

Patrick slowly nods, and Jonny drops his hand and stands aside.

"Now go and get some food, you must be starving," he says, and doesn't look back to see if Patrick's gone off when he goes into the bathroom to shower, but when he steps out, Patrick's not in the room anymore.

\---

Some indeterminate time later, Jonny's woken from his nap by the feel of someone pulling the covers off him.

"What time is it?" he croaks when he forces one eye open and sees Patrick hovering over him. He's got far more colour in his cheeks now than he did earlier, and he's in one of Jonny's Blackhawks Strength t-shirts, stretched tight across his shoulders.

"Not quite three in the afternoon," Patrick says. "You can sleep a while more before going for your game. I'm sorry I woke you."

Jonny shuts his eyes again. "Did you want to nap too?"

"Yeah."

Jonny doesn't respond, but shifts over a little, and then feels the dip of the mattress as Patrick climbs into the bed. There's a bit of shuffling, and then the covers are pulled back up, and Jonny feels Patrick turning into the warm depression left where he'd been lying, tucking himself against Jonny's back, breath puffing warm on his shoulder blade.

It's easy for Jonny to slip into sleep again.

\---

This time, when he wakes, Patrick's twined in his arms again. It's a little – unexpected, and surreal, how neatly Patrick fits with him physically, like Jonny had sketched out the exact specifications of a guy he wanted as a pleasure slave and got him in Patrick.

Patrick wakes as he's extricating himself from the sheets, and stretches, feline-like. His Blackhawks tee rides up, exposing the deep line of his oblique muscle, and Jonny's mind flashes back on the way Patrick had looked naked, abs tensing and clenching as he came over his fist.

"Hey," he says quickly. "Sleep more if you want, I've got to get to the UC – " and stops when Patrick slides out of the bed gracefully. Okay then.

He's done this so many hundreds of times, on so many game days, that it takes him barely half an hour to shave, run a comb through his hair, and put on a suit. The one he picks today is one of his nicest – a dark charcoal-grey herringbone, pastel blue shirt and deep blue tie. It's worth it when he steps out of the walk-in closet, and Patrick's eyes literally light up at the sight of him. Jonny can't help but feel a little smug, and he looks down to fiddle with his cuffs and hide the growing smile on his face.

"Let me," Patrick says, and takes the box of cufflinks from Jonny. Then he's winding his fingers around Jonny's wrist, deftly sliding the links through the buttonholes at the cuffs. His fingers are thick and square, capable-looking. Jonny's seen lots of strong, capable hands in hockey, and Patrick's look like they could be in hockey.

"All done," Patrick says, and then reaches up to adjust the knot of Jonny's tie.

"Thanks," Jonny says. The skin of his wrists are still hot where Patrick held them.

There's a fraught, awkward moment where Jonny thinks he's just going to say bye and leave, when Patrick asks, "Could you show me how to use your entertainment system? I'd like to watch the game."

"You watch hockey?" Jonny says, surprised.

"Yeah, my previous owners liked it, and they used to let me watch with them." There's a faint smile on Patrick's face, dimples flashing all too briefly.

"Ever played?" Jonny asks, leading him to the TV and its row of remote controls.

This time, Patrick's smile is slightly bitter. "Nah. Couldn't afford it."

And – of course. If his family had been able to afford for him to play hockey, Patrick wouldn't have needed to sell himself into debt bondage. Jonny wants to maybe punch himself in the face for that faux pas.

"We could go someday," he says, desperate for something to break the silence. "I can take you to Johnny's Icehouse, teach you how to skate."

Patrick's eyebrows shoot up again. "Are you sure you're supposed to do that?"

Jonny shrugs. "I'm pretty sure no one would care, and even if they do, I don't care. The guys bring their families or friends there all the time."

"I guess no one would be able to stop you anyway, since it's _your_ Icehouse," Patrick says, eyes twinkling and the corners of his mouth beginning to turn up in a grin.

Jonny sputters a little, and then feels his cheeks heat up when Patrick starts laughing, those lovely dimples carving deep dents in his cheeks. Jonny wants to maybe press his fingers to them, feel the way they dip in Patrick's skin.

Instead he says, "Shut up and look here", and leaves only after he's doggedly explained the setup to Patrick through his laughter and flung the remotes at him. It's not until he's in the car, house safely receding in his rearview mirror, that he allows himself to smile.

\---

It's a great night – Jonny puts up four points with a goal and three assists, the team are playing like they're in the Cup finals, and they roll out of the UC with a 5-1 win against Washington. Jonny doesn't often drink during the season, but when he's pumped up on a good win and his team are being uproarious, he just goes with it.

He's thinking about Patrick and wondering if he watched the game when Panarin puts a beer in his hand and then distracts him with some questions about their powerplay unit, Tikhonov and Hoss joining in next to him. It successfully takes his mind off Patrick, at least until he's fistbumping the guys and getting into his car.

He's careful not to drink to excess – he's driving after all – but he's got a good buzz going on when he pulls up at his driveway. He's slightly disappointed to see the house dark – Patrick's probably asleep, and Jonny had sort of been looking forward to pick his brain, see how well he knew the game.

It's not enough to dampen his good mood and the warm feeling of tipsiness though, so when he enters the bedroom and snaps on the night light, the first thing he feels when he sees Patrick fast asleep in his bed, curled up on his side with his back to the door, is an overwhelming rush of affection.

The next thing he notices is that Patrick's in nothing but a pair of boxers – they're Armani and a little loose, so they have to be Jonny's – and they’re slipped low, clinging to the gentle rising swell of his ass. Patrick's body is loose and lax in sleep, but the muscles in his back are delineated softly in the dim orange glow of the lamp. 

A sudden surge of possessiveness rises over Jonny, until he's breathing hard with it – the thought that Patrick's _his_. Lying in his bed, there for the taking, his. Bought and paid for and completely, utterly his.

Jonny thinks of the owner's agreement he signed, now sitting in his safe, with the words stating _Patrick Timothy Kane agrees to be bound to Jonathan Bryan Toews for an unspecified duration_ in clear black on white, and shrugs his jacket off.

He continues staring at Patrick as he strips methodically; his suit crumples in a pile on the floor, but he doesn't think about it, just drinks in how Patrick looks all spread out on his rumpled cream sheets. He's breathtakingly gorgeous, and by the time Jonny's naked, he's already half-hard.

He slides into the bed behind Patrick; Patrick doesn't stir, his ribcage expanding and deflating steadily with his slow, even breaths, and Jonny leans in just to nose along Patrick's shoulder.

There's a smattering of freckles across his skin, and when Jonny takes a breath, Patrick smells – of his shampoo and his mint body wash. Patrick smells like him, and it hits him like a puck to his gut, this certain and immutable knowledge that Patrick belongs to him.

Patrick still doesn't stir even when Jonny puts a hand on his waist and slides it down. Doesn't move when Jonny strokes his hand over the curve of his hip and grips it, fitting his fingers into the hollow of his hipbone, thumb pressing into the firm giving muscle of his ass.

Jonny turns away only long enough to rummage under the bed and retrieve the bottle of lube he keeps tucked there, before resuming stroking over Patrick's waist and hip, his palm catching on the fabric of his boxers.

He has to sit up for this, when he gets his fingers lubed up and then gently draws the boxers down over Patrick's hip with his clean hand, revealing his ass. Jonny remembers how it had felt in his hands the day before during the auction, perfectly-shaped and firm and smooth, and can't resist smoothing his lube-wet hand over it, leaving a glistening streak on Patrick's skin.

The way Patrick's sleeping, his legs are curled up towards his chest, so it's easy for Jonny to slip a wet finger into the cleft of his ass and stroke it over his hole.

Patrick stirs for the first time since Jonny had touched him, and Jonny freezes; but Patrick merely smacks his lips together and nuzzles back into the pillow, lifting one of his legs higher on the bed, as if on instinct.

It gives Jonny more room to work, and Jonny pushes his finger into Patrick, holding his breath. It goes in easy, because Patrick's all soft and relaxed, and indeed, all he does is sigh a little in his sleep, a slight frown appearing between his brows.

Jonny holds his finger still for a moment, just relishing the heat and velvety tightness around it, before stroking it in and out gently and then sliding a second one in. He's so hard now that his dick's pressed against the back of Patrick's thigh, sliding in the slippery wetness of his precome.

Patrick actually whimpers, this time, and shifts, rolling his body towards Jonny; Jonny stills his fingers until Patrick settles.

The third finger goes in with some difficulty, but the friction is delicious to Jonny. He'd forgotten this, how it feels to just have his fingers in someone, feel the hot, desperate cling of their body as they try to get ready for his cock. He's gentle, though, as he feathers his fingertips slowly in a come-here gesture inside Patrick, twists his wrist so his fingers are angled another way, and drags over the little nub of nerves in him.

Patrick comes awake with a choked, hot gasp, tightening around Jonny's fingers. Jonny strokes over his prostate again, just to watch, and Patrick's mouth drops open in a soft moan, ass clenching so tight that Jonny can see the rippling muscles in his glutes.

"Hey," Jonny says, leaning over him to press a kiss to his shoulder, keeping his fingers still in Patrick. He can see Patrick turn towards his voice, blinking and bleary-eyed, the blue in them clouded with sleep. His lashes are so long, they're casting dark shadows on his cheeks in the low orange light.

"Finally decided to use me?" Patrick says, voice raspy, but he's smiling, and Jonny decides not to feel bad about fingering his pleasure slave awake.

"Still want to be used?" Jonny asks, and strokes his fingers just around the edges of Patrick's prostate but not over it, so that Patrick gasps and wriggles back, trying to get Jonny's fingers where he wants them; Jonny yanks his boxers down finally, over his thighs, allowing Patrick to kick them off, before he pulls his fingers out to the first knuckle, keeping Patrick open on them. He grins as Patrick frowns, and spreads his fingers to look down at his hole, eager and flexing around them.

Patrick reaches up and flaps his hand limply about until it lands on Jonny's cheek, then he reaches further back to curl his hand about the nape of Jonny's neck and pull him closer. Jonny goes, fitting his mouth at the sweet curve where Patrick's shoulder slopes into his neck, and feels Patrick sigh at the touch of his tongue to the skin.

"What do you think?" Patrick says, voice still rough from being woken up, and rolls his hips back, swallowing Jonny's fingers back inside him.

They rock like that for a while, until Jonny loses time; everything is the scent of Patrick in his nose, the smoothness of his skin as he mouths along it, Patrick's little gasps and moans when Jonny crooks his fingers just so. It takes Patrick whining, "Jonny, Jonny, please", for Jonny to snap out of it and pull his fingers out of Patrick, one at a time, so he can watch how his little hole wraps itself around each one as if he's desperate to keep Jonny inside him.

He doesn't ask if Patrick's ready; Patrick's whimpering softly, hitching his hips back and forth, and when Jonny looks over, his dick is hard and flushed and bobbing against his belly. Jonny hitches Patrick's leg up, takes Patrick's hand and wraps it behind his knee.

"Hold your leg up," he instructs, and Patrick does it, tugging his leg up towards his chest so his hole is open to Jonny's hungry gaze.

"Perfect," Jonny tells him, and then he hooks his thumb in the rim and holds Patrick open, fits his cockhead there, and slides in, smooth as satin.

Patrick chokes on a sharp inhale, and his free hand scrabbles in Jonny's sheets, fisting the fabric as Jonny fucks in inexorably. But his cock is still as hard as ever, so Jonny takes it as Patrick's okay, and works his cock in until his hips are pressed to the tight swells of Patrick's ass.

"Yeah?" he asks, and is surprised by how his voice sounds; it's deeper than usual, rough, like sandpaper on silk. He curves his arm around Patrick's thigh and holds it up as well, close to Patrick's body, opening him up a little more so he can wriggle closer and get his cock in as deep as it can go.

"I'm good," Patrick tells him. "Fuck, you feel so good – "

Jonny feels like that's something he should be saying to Patrick, because Patrick's clinging to him like a vise and it feels like his cock is surrounded in almost overwhelming heat. And Patrick's making abortive little rolls of his hips, as if he still wants more of Jonny's cock. Jonny has no idea how long he can last.

He fucks in, slow short thrusts at first, barely rocking his cock in and out, until Patrick is gasping in little puffs of air, dragging Jonny close again so Jonny can kiss at his neck. He's sucking a hickey into the back of Patrick's neck when he begins to speed up, pumping his hips back and forth in long deep thrusts. He lifts his head long enough to look down and watch his cock driving into Patrick, and pauses for a while on the outstroke just to see the way Patrick's hole opens around his cockhead, his rim and Jonny's dick glistening wet with lube. Patrick moans, and tries to fuck himself back on Jonny's cock, wordlessly begging for it.

"I got it, I got it," Jonny says, and screws back in; Patrick's mouth, red and bruised from where he'd been chewing on his lips, drops open and he chokes out a broken "oh god, _Jonny_ ", that makes Jonny fuck inside him harder.

And Patrick – he just takes it, whatever Jonny's giving him, takes it beautifully and asks for more, and Jonny can already feel the pressure building in his balls. He finds the spot he was worrying at on Patrick's neck earlier and fits his mouth over it again, groaning into his skin. Fuck, but Patrick feels _amazing_ , all wet and warm and responsive, and Jonny can't remember the last time he'd fucked someone who'd liked it this much.

Patrick's pushing himself back onto Jonny's cock with every thrust in, tilting his hips a little so the head of Jonny's cock slides over his prostate each time, and he's moaning Jonny's _name_ , moaning so loud Jonny's glad no one else lives with them. His cock is dark red and slapping against his abs with every stroke, leaving a glistening patch of precome. Jonny can't help but reach down to swipe his thumb over the wetness, and then presses his thumb to Patrick's mouth.

"Lick, Patrick," he says, and almost before he's finished speaking, Patrick's tongue has curled out, swiping across the pad of his thumb, sucking it into his mouth; Jonny can feel the eager strokes of his tongue against it. "That's it, taste what I do to you. You love this, don't you."

Patrick nods, eyes fluttering shut.

"God, you're so good," Jonny says, fucking him faster now, making sure to grind his cock against his prostate and make him moan around Jonny's thumb. "Feel so hot and tight. Worth every fucking cent."

Patrick whimpers, and his cock drools a pearly bead of precome as Jonny watches.

"Can you come like this?" Jonny asks, pushing his cock against that spot inside Patrick and grinding in. "Can you come just on my cock?"

Patrick nods again. His eyes are squeezed shut and he's sucking on Jonny's thumb like it's the only thing keeping the sounds from spilling out of his mouth, which – Jonny takes his hand away, runs it down his chest and rubs his wet thumb over Patrick's nipple, peaked and hard from arousal.

"Do it," Jonny says. "You can come whenever you want."

As if he's been waiting for Jonny to say this, Patrick moans, voice pitched low and desperate, "Jonny, oh fuck, Jonny, do that, like that, just like that, please – "

Jonny fucks his cockhead against Patrick's prostate once, twice, and Patrick's coming, mouth open and red, choking out, "Jonny – fuck – _coming_ – " and splattering up to his chest, cock jerking and ass squeezing tight on Jonny's cock.

Jonny has never once had a guy manage to come just from being fucked. It's the single hottest thing he has ever seen, and sends him hurtling into his own orgasm as well, grinding it out into Patrick as he gasps and gasps.

"Holy shit," he says, when he's come down. His cock's still inside Patrick, still hard; he wants to fuck him a little bit more, see how much they both can stand before they get too sensitive, but tiredness from a night of double-shifting on the ice, drinking, and sex, is already creeping up on him. He reluctantly pulls out from Patrick, as slow as he can.

"You okay?" he asks. Patrick flails a hand at him in a gesture that he takes to mean as 'okay'.

He scoots down a little and spreads Patrick's ass open – he means to just check to see if Patrick's been hurt in any way, if his hole's red or painful; but when he does, Patrick flexes a little in his palms, and a slow viscous trickle of come drips out of him before Jonny's stunned eyes.

That's another first – he's never fucked someone without a condom before. He thinks he could get used to the sight of this.

"Jesus," he mutters, and swipes his fingers over Patrick's hole, feels it sticky and wet. His spent cock twitches feebly against his thigh when he slides two fingers back in, and it's wet and messy inside with his come.

But Patrick hisses, so Jonny draws his fingers out slowly, pressing an impulsive kiss to his hip.

"Sorry," Patrick says, sounding drowsy and apologetic. "Just a little sore for now, not quite used to this yet."

Jonny pauses. What did Patrick mean, he wasn't used to this?

But Patrick's already drifting into sleep, his endless lashes splayed against his cheeks, and Jonny heaves himself out of bed to clean up as much as he can, and grabs a towel to wipe the come off Patrick's abs and chest.

The mark he'd sucked earlier into Patrick's neck is purpling now, and Jonny admires it for a bit before he carefully spreads Patrick's ass again, intending to clean his hole. It's gleaming and sticky with come, and Jonny stares at it for a while before deciding – he likes it this way.

He tosses the cloth in the general direction of where he thinks his laundry basket is, and then snaps the light off and finds his way into bed, where Patrick's already breathing deeply in sleep.

Jonny nuzzles Patrick's neck one last time, his curls now damp with sweat, curves an arm over his waist, and drifts off easily.

\---

When the morning comes, Jonny's awakened by the brightness of sunlight behind his closed eyelids. He frowns, forcingone eye open, and regrets it right away when light spills over his face, making him groan a little and shut it again.

By the time he manages to get his eyes open, the warmth of a body tucked up against him has made him remember exactly what happened with the owner of that body, and more importantly, why there's fucking sunlight in his bedroom waking him up at ass o' clock in the morning.

Patrick's breathing deep, face mashed against Jonny's side, right below his underarm, which explains why he wasn't bothered by the sunlight. He's got a leg slung over Jonny's thighs, and Jonny runs his palm over the curving muscle of Patrick's firm quadricep, remembering how he'd fucked Patrick on his side while Patrick held this very same leg out of the way for him, opening himself for Jonny. His dick thickens interestedly from where it's lying half-hard against Patrick's thigh.

Patrick's cock is hard too, pressed into Jonny's hip, and Jonny really has got to do something about this brightness before he starts a repeat performance of last night.

He slides out of bed, watching amused as Patrick simply rolls over into the warm dip made by his body and buries his face into the pillow. It takes Jonny only a few seconds to draw the curtains that Patrick hadn't last night – and Jonny was too, well, preoccupied to remember to do so – and then get back into the bed, pulling the covers back. Patrick's on his front, so the first thing Jonny sees is the sticky gleam of dried come and lube smeared across his ass and between his splayed-open thighs.

Jonny's dick comes roaring to life so fast, all the blood rushing down south, that it makes Jonny feel lightheaded for a second.

He slips a couple of fingers into the inviting cleft of Patrick's ass, not quite touching his hole, just leaving them there to feel the stickiness from last night that he'd put there. He ducks down to look at Patrick's face; it's peaceful and gorgeous in sleep, long lashes spread on his cheeks, cheekbones perfect and sharp under smooth skin. His mouth is slightly open, lips pouty, and Jonny - Jonny finds himself leaning close to kiss him, before he stops himself just as his lips brush lightly against Patrick's.

 _He's a slave,_ Jonny reminds himself. _Slaves are for using, not kissing._ He pulls back and spends a few regretful seconds gazing at the sweet, perfect bow of Patrick's mouth, and settles for nosing along his shoulder instead.

He's mouthing at the ball of Patrick's shoulder when he rubs his fingers across Patrick's hole, sinking just his fingertips in; Patrick's still soft and open from last night, so they go in easily, but Patrick's lashes flutter, and he opens his eyes, hazy with sleep.

"Mr. Toews?" he says, voice rough and raspy, and Jonny licks a long stripe across the muscle of his shoulder.

"What did I tell you?" he asks softly.

"Jonny," Patrick says, throaty, and Jonny bites him lightly in the same moment he hooks his index finger into the rim of Patrick's hole, knuckle crooked to hold him open.

Patrick hisses, and Jonny stops right away. "Are you too sore?"

Patrick frowns a little, as if thinking, and Jonny can't help it, he just can't - he kisses that little crease in between his eyebrows too, and as if his lips have a mind of their own, finds his way to Patrick's soft, perfect mouth. 

It's like an electric bolt shot through Jonny's body, the way Patrick opens up into the kiss. Patrick's tentative at first, as if he's not too sure about this, and the thought flashes unbidden into Jonny's mind again – pleasure slaves aren't really for kissing, merely for fucking. A living fleshlight for someone to get off, and it appears as if Patrick's previous owners leaned towards the traditional side of things, if they'd hardly kissed him. But the deep sense of satisfaction thrumming through Jonny's body, that he gets to have this, chooses to have this - he can't stop himself from kissing Patrick now, even if he tried.

Patrick's a quick study; when Jonny deepens the kiss, grasping Patrick's jaw so he can tilt his head and fit their mouths together more closely, Patrick follows his cue, tongue curling against Jonny's, his hand coming up to grip Jonny's shoulder as if on instinct.

They kiss like that for a while, Patrick's mouth hungry against his, until Jonny finally wrenches away from him, rolling onto his back. Patrick follows, as if he can't bear to be away from Jonny's mouth, draping himself over his body, and he's a sight; his mouth's already reddened just from a few minutes of kissing, eyes half-lidded, breathing heavily.

"Are you too sore?" Jonny asks again, crooking his finger in a little deeper. Patrick actually _whines_ , and shakes his head, leaning in to try to catch his mouth.

Jonny laughs a little when he goes back in, kissing Patrick like Patrick needs it to breathe. "I'm going to fuck you again, if you feel fine."

Patrick nods against his mouth, curling his hand around the nape of Jonny's neck to tug him closer, and says, "Please."

It's fucking flattering, is what it is, to have a beautiful man plastered to him and begging for him with his every move. Everything about Patrick is supremely great for Jonny's ego.

Patrick's hips lift up into it when Jonny sinks his finger all the way into him, and oh, shit – Patrick's warm and wet inside with his come from last night, a little loose, and he's not going to need much more prep. Which is good, because Jonny is close to exploding just from this.

"Get the lube," he tells Patrick, and Patrick pushes up with a hand on Jonny's chest, leans across to snag the little bottle from the nightstand, where Jonny left it. Jonny sinks his finger deeper into Patrick and rubs it over his prostate, and Patrick chokes, drops the bottle on Jonny's chest.

"Slick me up," he says, finger stroking firm and rhythmic over the nub of nerves inside Patrick, and Patrick moans, head dropping, before he slaps at Jonny's chest half-heartedly.

"Stop," he says breathlessly. "I can't do anything if you – _oh_ –"

Jonny pulls his finger out and lifts Patrick over him as he shifts upwards on the bed until he's leaning against the headboard. Patrick's mouth is open slightly at the ease with which Jonny's manhandling him, and Jonny kisses him again, smiling into his mouth.

"Can you now?" he asks, and Patrick nods shakily. He uncaps the bottle and squeezes out what looks like far too little lube into his palm, and then smears it across the head of Jonny's cock, rolling his palm over it.

Jonny exhales, watching Patrick's hand work on him. "You sure that's enough?" he says. Patrick's only rubbed in enough lube for the tip of his cock, nothing on the shaft at all.

Patrick looks at him through lowered lashes. "I think – I'm still pretty wet inside, yeah?"

Jesus Christ. Jonny tightens his hands on Patrick's hips, tracks the shy curve of his smile. His heart is hammering in his chest like a pneumatic drill with the idea that Patrick wants him like this – wants to feel him and feel what they did –

"Fuck," is all he can say, as he lifts Patrick up to hover over his cock. "Like this – "

Patrick blinks, and then scrambles to tuck his knees tight alongside Jonny's hips.

He braces himself with one hand on Jonny's shoulder and reaches back with the other to line Jonny's cock up, and then sinks down on the head, lashes fluttering. Jonny twines a hand in his hair again and drags him down, biting on Patrick's lush lower lip.

Patrick moans into his mouth, and slips a couple inches lower; Jonny tries to focus on breathing, when Patrick's kissing him so sweetly and swallowing his cock into that tight, velvety heat.

"Good," he tells Patrick, who shuts his eyes and blindly mouths at Jonny's lips even as he sinks lower, thighs trembling with the strain. "You're doing so good, Patrick, you feel so good. Should have paid more for you, you're perfect like this."

Patrick makes a muffled noise, and works his hips more; Jonny has to shut his eyes too against the sweet tight hold Patrick's hole has on his cock. He's wet inside, like he'd said, and it's hot as hell to Jonny, to think of Patrick keeping his come in all night, keeping himself wet for Jonny.

He tilts Patrick's head back to expose the smooth pale column of his throat, and closes his mouth over the jut of his Adam's apple. Patrick sighs, and drops his hips, and then Jonny's fully seated in him, in the hot grip of Patrick's ass.

It feels fucking _perfect_ , like Jonny's cock was made to fit in there, and Jonny noses along Patrick's jawline and tells him so.

"Jonny," Patrick rasps, winding his arms around Jonny's neck for support as he lifts himself up; Jonny has to groan at the smooth clinging pressure on his cock, like Patrick's hole is reluctant to ever give him up.

"Yeah, fuck, you're doing great," Jonny says, biting at Patrick's neck, his finely stubbled jaw, his lips. "You're doing so well, Patrick, taking me like – _ah_ – like you're made for me. And you’re so wet inside, you feel so fucking perfect – "

Patrick lets out a sound that can only be described as a sob, and fucks himself down on Jonny's cock again, twisting his hips so his ass is pressed firm to Jonny's thighs and grinding down; Jonny knows what he wants, and takes hold of his ass, squeezing gently before spreading his cheeks apart wider and fucking up into him.

Patrick's eyes snap open, round and shocked, and there's hardly any blue in his eyes now, just a thin line around wide dark pupils.

"Yeah?" Jonny asks, keeping Patrick open so Patrick can work his cock as deep into him as it can go, not really riding him anymore, just rocking his hips in tiny little circles that grip Jonny's cock just as good.

"Yeah," Patrick breathes; and then he leans forward, catching Jonny's mouth in another kiss as he squirms on his cock, and Jonny lets him do it, lets him move to find the angle he wants. He knows Patrick's got it when Patrick arches his back a little, and moans, loud and low.

Jonny lets Patrick fuck himself on his cock for a while more, just enjoying the way Patrick breathes wetly against his mouth and moans whenever he gets Jonny's cock just right, clenching with each roll of his hips. But it's good, so good, Patrick's wet little hole milking his cock, and it's an embarrassingly short amount of time before Jonny feels the orgasm coiling in his belly, curling his toes.

"Patrick," he says, letting his teeth catch on Patrick's lip. "I'm close."

Patrick makes an approving little sound and tightens himself up, still undulating his hips, moving faster now, encouraging Jonny to brace his feet against the mattress and lift his hips to fuck into him.

Jonny glances down to where Patrick's cock is bobbing between them, hard and flushed dark red, gleaming with precome; as he watches, another milky bead forms on the head of his cock and leaks down in a clear stream. Jonny wishes he could get his mouth on it – but one day, soon, not now, not when he's so close.

"You gonna come?" he gasps out. He's going to come soon – he needs Patrick to do it, so he can feel it around his cock.

"Soon," Patrick says breathlessly, working himself down as Jonny fucks up, so the sound of his ass meeting Jonny's thighs slaps loud in the air between them. "Almost – ah, yeah, don't stop, please, _please_ – "

"Not stopping," Jonny says, through gritted teeth – you couldn't pay him enough to stop now, even if he wanted to – and on Patrick's next downward rock, Jonny readjusts his grip on Patrick's ass, a little slippery now from sweat, spreads him and just grinds up into him, forcing his cock against where Patrick's prostate should be.

From the way Patrick's spine snaps straight, mouth dropping open, Jonny guesses he'd got it, and he ruthlessly grinds into it, breathing hard and feeling his own orgasm teetering on the edge from Patrick's tight, rhythmic clenching.

"Come, Patrick," he gasps. "Come now – " and Patrick, shockingly, _does_ , cock spurting against Jonny's abdomen, even as he looks down at it like he can't believe his own dick. He's pulsing and clamping down hard around Jonny's dick, and only a man made of stone would be able to remain unaffected by that, so Jonny fucks up one final time and comes as well, mouth sealed over the sharp curve of Patrick's jawline, panting wetly into it.

Patrick flops down onto Jonny's chest, breathing heavily, and they stay like that until Jonny feels himself softening inside Patrick.

It's with a lot of reluctance that he lets himself slip out of Patrick, cock slapping against Patrick's thigh with a wet sound as it does so, and Patrick murmurs pleasedly into Jonny's skin when Jonny reaches down and sinks two fingers back into him, just to feel the hot flood of his come inside Patrick.

"Next time," he says, pressing a kiss to Patrick's tousled golden curls, "I'm going to get down there and eat you out after. Clean you up nicely and then mess you up again."

Patrick shudders, and then mouths at Jonny's nipple. Cheeky.

They lie like that for a while, Patrick kissing and licking sleepily at the skin of Jonny's chest, and Jonny's fingers stuffed inside Patrick, until Jonny thinks to look at the clock on the dresser. It's blinking 10:08 a.m., and Jonny heaves a sigh.

"I've got to get ready for morning skate," he tells Patrick, who makes a sound of protest and resumes pressing kisses into his chest and shoulder.

"Come on," he laughs, sliding his fingers out – Patrick jerks when his fingertips brush the sensitive, sore rim of his hole, and Jonny immediately feels bad – and kissing his forehead. "I need to go, but I'll be back soon."

Patrick sighs, and then rolls off Jonny, settling on his stomach on the bed. Jonny's about to climb over him when he sees – a white trickle of come on the back of Patrick's thigh.

It's a Herculean effort for Jonny to heave himself out of bed and into the bathroom – another few seconds and he'd probably have started it with Patrick all over again.

\---

Practice goes surprisingly well; the guys still rib him about Patrick, but Jonny's feeling well-fucked and carrying around a general aura of pleased wellbeing, so he lets their taunts slide off him like oil on glass.

"Look at him grinning," Hammer says. "He definitely got laid. Used your slave, huh?"

"Better use him good," Trevor says, and _this_ Jonny double takes at, because – what? Trevor has always been the nicest of the guys. He revises this opinion in a hurry when Trevor adds, "For the amount you paid for him, you should get your money's worth. I got my own pleasure slave for just $112,000."

"I got mine for $170,000, and he works just as well as one which costs $880,000," Crow calls out.

Jonny skates away.

\---

They don't have a game that night, so when he gets home, he makes lunch and Patrick helps him.

It's just a simple lunch, pasta that Patrick is surprisingly adept at cooking aglio olio, and shrimp that Jonny sautés with garlic. It strikes him that the chemistry they have in bed seems to spill over in other parts of their life as well; they work together in the kitchen smoothly despite having never spent time with each other out of bed, moving around each other like Patrick's been here for years and not just a couple of days.

"You know your way around," Jonny comments, when Patrick pulls open the right cabinet to get plates.

"I had a lot of time to look around and prepare my own food," Patrick shrugs, and Jonny reminds himself to go grocery shopping soon.

They're settled on the couch to watch TV; Jonny's a little tired from sex and practice, and Patrick seems content to Netflix old seasons of Homeland, so Jonny's just kind of drowsing on the couch when he remembers something, and goes to get it.

The documents he'd got in the auction where he'd bought Patrick are locked in the safe in his closet, and when he retrieves the envelope, he looks through the papers inside until he finds the checklist Patrick had filled out.

He feels a little guilty that he'd started having sex with Patrick before going through it and acquainting himself with Patrick's Yes's and No's; but Patrick had seemed to enjoy every moment as much as Jonny had, and he'd never told Jonny to stop. Even so, Jonny feels better when he flops back down on the couch next to Patrick, and smooths out the papers.

"What's that?" Patrick asks, glancing over; Jonny watches in fascination as Patrick recognizes the checklist, and begins flushing a very fetching pink.

"You – are you really reading this now?" he says. "Can't we just, I don’t know, enjoy Homeland?"

"You enjoy it," Jonny tells him. "I should have read this days ago. What if I'd hurt you?"

Patrick's eyes immediately grow soft. "You didn't hurt me."

"I could have, and I wouldn't have known it," Jonny says. "So I've got to get going on this. No time like the present, right?"

The list is arranged alphabetically, from **Abrasions** (a big **NO** scrawled next to it) down to **Wooden Paddles** (Patrick's put **YES** for that; Jonny immediately wonders where he can get ping-pong paddles, and then feels a little ashamed). There are things he expects Patrick to say yes to, and indeed there are; things like bondage, blindfolds, cock worship (jesus, Jonny needs to get him on that someday).

Then there are other Yes's that make Jonny arch an eyebrow, like fantasy gangbangs, modeling for nude photos, forced dressing/nudity in private, or serving as a maid. He thinks of posing Patrick post-coital on his bed, come still streaked over his body like it was this morning, making him spread his legs to the camera so it can capture his used, wet hole. Maybe he should invest in a good camera. He glances over at Patrick, who's biting his lip and looking very pink.

"You seem to… like it, when you're being controlled," Jonny says slowly. "When someone takes control and tells you what to do."

"That's what I'm for," Patrick says, lashes lowered modestly.

Jonny runs over the list of No's, and approves of them all, because the things that Patrick doesn't want to do aren't exactly things that get Jonny off either. He does stop, though, at an emphatic **NO** , next to **Given to another owner (temporary)** , and feels a surge of relief that Patrick's essentially said no to everything involving Jonny having to share him with someone else.

He turns towards Patrick, who's still chewing his lip like he's worried, and tells him, "I don't intend to _ever_ let someone else use you."

Patrick nods, slow, and lifts his eyes to Jonny.

"And I know – it's common, in parties, to share pleasure slaves around. It happens too, at Blackhawks parties. But I won't – no one else is going to touch you, and I'm not going to humiliate you like that."

Patrick smiles then, and – god, that smile. Jonny finds himself enchanted, so of course he has to toss the papers aside and lean over to kiss him.

Patrick meets him hungrily, and fuck, Jonny loves kissing him, feeling the plush give of his lips. He's not really thinking of taking this further, just wants to make out with Patrick on the couch; but then Patrick reaches down and curls his fingers around Jonny's cock, which goes from interested to hard as a rock in a minute.

Jonny pulls down Patrick's sweatpants, and then – realizes they have no lube.

Cursing, he leaps off the couch and takes the stairs three at a time, telling himself in his head to buy more lube and stock them around the house. By the time he gets back, breathing hard, Patrick's kicked off his sweatpants and knelt on the couch, folding himself over the back of it. Jonny nearly swallows his tongue.

But when he lubes up and spreads Patrick's cheeks, his hole is red and puffy, and Jonny remembers how sensitive he'd been this morning, after they'd fucked.

"You – are you sore?" he asks.

"I'm fine," Patrick says, fist against his mouth. "If you want to – I'm fine. I want this."

Jonny takes a deep breath and fits the head of his cock against Patrick's hole, pushes in just an inch. Watches as Patrick winces and tries to hide it by pushing his face into the couch cushions, but his fist is white-knuckled from how hard he's gripping the fabric.

Jonny stops right away and steps away from Patrick, feeling like he's been burned. "Patrick – "

Patrick turns his head, cheek pressed to the cushion. "Why aren't you – why'd you stop?"

"You're in _pain_ ," Jonny points out.

"I said I'll be fine, you can if you want it."

"God," Jonny says helplessly. "Patrick, you can't – stay here."

He heads, still naked, to the kitchen, where he wipes his dick free of lube, and then roots around until he finds a cool salve made of aloe vera. When he goes back out, Patrick's exactly where he left him, ass arched out like he's still waiting for Jonny to fuck him; Jonny feels simultaneously guilty and turned on.

Mentally telling his dick to stand down, he scoops out some of the salve from the jar, and very gently rubs over Patrick's sore, used hole. Patrick jerks, but as Jonny continues to slowly rub the salve into his skin, he begins to relax, spine curving as he sags into the couch.

"That feels nice," he says.

"Yeah, it's soothing," Jonny says. "My mom sends this to me, I use it on cuts and scrapes. Helps the soreness."

He wipes his fingers off with tissue, and then pats Patrick on the ass. "Done. Come on, sit up."

Patrick's pulling his sweatpants on again when Jonny speaks. "Patrick, we don't have to fuck all the time. If you don't feel good, just _tell_ me."

"I thought you wanted it," Patrick says, in a soft low voice.

Jonny sighs. "I'm a guy doing the pitching, not catching, and you're gorgeous – of course I want it. But I don't _need_ to have it. If you're in pain, or not feeling well, or whatever – you have to tell me. I'm not going to punish you for it, or do anything to you. If you really want me to fuck you, you're going to need to be in your best condition for it, don't you think?"

There's a silence, and when Jonny looks at Patrick to see why he's gone quiet, Patrick's staring at him with something akin to admiration. "You're not like most owners."

"I'm just being a decent human being," Jonny grunts.

He's looking away, towards the windows, so he's not expecting it when Patrick walks over and drops to his knees between his legs, graceful as anything, and looks up at him with huge, wanting blue eyes.

"What are you – " he begins, when Patrick smiles up at him again. The force of that smile shuts him right up.

"We can do other things apart from fucking, right?" Patrick says, pressing a kiss to the inside of Jonny's thigh, mouth tantalizingly close to his dick, which is starting to take an interest in the proceedings again. "Let me suck you, yeah?"

Like there's any universe where Jonny is going to say no to that.

Patrick, once he gets going, is enthusiastic and sloppy, just the way Jonny likes it. Patrick sucks him till his dick is sopping wet and bulging out the inside of his cheek obscenely, spit running down his chin, but the way he flicks his tongue along the underside of Jonny's cock as he sucks him is making Jonny's eyes roll back in his head.

Then Patrick hollows his cheeks and takes Jonny in _deep_ , until Jonny can feel his cockhead bump against the back of Patrick's throat; he expects Patrick to choke, but instead, Patrick swallows, choking only a tiny bit before he recovers and gets Jonny's cock so far in that he's got his nose pressed into the dark curls at the base of Jonny's dick.

Holy shit. Jonny flings an arm over his eyes, because he's going to shoot off far too early if he looks; then he takes his arm away again, because, well, he needs to see the way Patrick's wet red lips are wrapped around the thickness of his cock, Patrick's blue eyes watery as he struggles to suck Jonny.

Patrick's got a good up-and-down suction going; Jonny feels his balls tighten, but just then Patrick pulls off to look at Jonny's dick, wet with spit and precome, and licks at the head, making Jonny groan and curse and thump his head back into the couch.

"Suck me, come on," he says roughly, and when Patrick doesn't show any sign of resuming the perfect suction he'd been doing, Jonny tangles his fingers into Patrick's curls and yanks him down on his cock.

Patrick goes easily, his hot mouth swallowing Jonny's dick like he's starving for it, and he doesn't tease anymore, just fucks his face on Jonny's cock, until Jonny tugs on his curls, tries to urge him off.

"I'm coming," he manages to force out, through the roiling buildup of his orgasm.

Patrick just shakes his head and forces his mouth down more on Jonny's cock, sucking hard, and that is just – he wasn't sure if Patrick would mind swallowing, mind the taste of semen, but Patrick's wanting it so fucking bad – and Jonny comes with his hands in Patrick's hair and his thighs and abs clenching, arching up into his mouth.

Patrick swallows the first few spurts, and then when the pulses of come are weakening he pulls off and milks the rest out on his lips, kissing and licking around the head of Jonny's cock as Jonny groans at the sight of Patrick's perfect, lush mouth smeared with his come.

"Oh, shit," Jonny says, shellshocked, and Patrick laughs against his cock where he's still lapping at it like he desperately needs more come.

Jonny tugs him up and gets a hand into his sweatpants, and kisses the taste of himself out of Patrick's mouth as Patrick fucks into his fist and comes over it, fingers digging into Jonny's shoulder and shaking.

\---

Patrick likes hockey - Jonny learned that within the first week. He grew up in a hockey-loving family, had in fact played when he was very young. "Before things all went to shit and we couldn't afford it anymore, of course," he tells Jonny, so matter-of-factly that it breaks Jonny's heart.

And Patrick's incredibly knowledgeable about hockey; it's not long before Jonny finds himself falling into the habit of watching game tape with Patrick, while they dissect his minutes on the ice. 

"You're pivoting your body forward too much," Patrick says one evening. "And you keep your knees turned out too much. Try shifting your centre of gravity downwards, keep your torso up. You'll be more stable that way."

"I'm stable now," Jonny argues.

"No, you fall on your ass all the time," Patrick says. "Shift your upper body and you'll stay on your feet."

"I don't fall," Jonny says, feeling a rush of annoyance.

Patrick shakes his head. "You do! And it's something that'll be so easy to change, all you need to do is - "

"Oh, fuck off," Jonny snaps. "I've skated this way for years, no one has ever said - "

Patrick's mouth opens as if he's going to retort, but then, abruptly, his face closes off. He bows his head and moves back in his chair - it's subtle, but Jonny catches the movement, and before he can say anything, Patrick seems to shut down completely.

"I'm sorry," Patrick says. His head is dropped so low his chin is nearly on his chest. "I overstepped. It won't happen again."

There are times when Jonny can almost forget Patrick's a slave, bought for pleasure. Then there are other times when Jonny is reminded so strongly of Patrick's status that it smacks into his gut. This is one of those times. It hits him so hard, he feels his brain fog up. _Fuck,_ he thinks to himself. _Fuck._

It almost physically hurts him, to see Patrick closed up like this, when he's begun treating Patrick like a - he doesn't even know _what_ , but he knows he doesn't treat Patrick like a slave, at least not in the privacy of his home, and he hates that he's made Patrick feel this way.

"No," he says. "Don't apologise. I shouldn't - I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"I forgot my place," says Patrick, so quiet Jonny almost misses it.

 _Your place is being my -_ Jonny wants to say, and then he stops. His what, exactly? What is Patrick to him? 

It makes his head hurt, twisting this about in his mind.

"You didn't," is all Jonny can say. "It's fine. Please, Patrick, it's okay. Look at me."

It takes a long while for Patrick to lift his eyes, but when he does, the first thing Jonny feels is overwhelming relief that Patrick's face no longer has that haunted, closed look. He reaches across for him and tilts Patrick's face up to him, and kisses him hard.

 _I'm so sorry_ , he thinks as hard as he can, as if the waves of swirling thought in his head are able to beam their way to Patrick. 

He doesn't say anything, and neither does Patrick.

\---

The next day, on impulse, Jonny tells Patrick to get dressed, because he's taking him to morning skate.

Patrick blinks at him. "Seriously?" he asks, but he's already sitting up in their bed.

"Yes," Jonny says. "It'll be fun."

"You know - this is not done, right?" Patrick says haltingly, like he's back to teaching Jonny the 101 on Keeping A Pleasure Slave.

Jonny knows; Jonny's very much aware that a slave is just - a slave, that taking one out in public is fine, but not giving one privileges or things like that. He does not _care_ ; he reasons that if he paid for Patrick with his own money, and if he's not doing anything illegal, then he's allowed to do whatever he wants with Patrick.

"Uh huh," Jonny says. "And I don't care."

"Oh," Patrick says, blinking in confusion; but he gets out of bed and heads to the shower.

Patrick's practically vibrating in his seat as they drive to Johnny's Icehouse; it's hard for Jonny to keep the smile off his face as he drives. He's still smiling when he walks into the locker room to suit up.

"There's some guy standing out there," Trevor says when he comes in. "Isn't this a closed practice?"

"Get security?" Scottie asks, tugging on his pads.

"No, don't," Jonny says hastily. "That's just Patrick."

The whistling starts up again, right on cue.

"Ugh," Jonny says. "Shut up and get out there, guys. And I don't want any of you talking to Patrick, got it? He doesn't need to be scared off by your ugly faces."

"That hurts, Tazer," Duncs says, but he's grinning, and so are the others. Jonny can't help but feel a rush of affection for his team.

\---

Jonny's aware that he's - well, kind of showing off as he goes through the drills on the ice. Each time he looks up Patrick's standing to the side, face nearly pressed to the glass panels, looking eager and excited. He even moves about to get better views of what's going on.

Jonny tries to get a little fancy during the shooting drill; he stickhandles down the ice smoothly, feints to his left when he nears Scottie, then knocks the puck towards his right skate and kicks it in on Scottie's open side. Patrick raises his arms in the air, as if it was a real goal Jonny scored in a real game, and Jonny feels smug.

"That was amazing," Patrick says when everyone else has skated off the ice and Jonny comes up last.

"You liked it?" Jonny asked. 

"For sure!"

"Good," Jonny says. "Come to the game tonight. I'll get you a spot in the management suite."

"Oh no, I couldn't - " Patrick begins, frantically shaking his head, and Jonny stops him.

"Yes you can," he says. "I'd really like you to come with me, watch me play."

Jonny waits patiently for Patrick's love of hockey to override his inclination for shyness, watching his face as it goes through a serious of most tortured expressions.

"Okay," he finally says, and Jonny resists the urge to punch the air.


	2. Chapter 2

Chris Kuc is the first to comment on it, during a post-game interview in Minnesota where they got ground into the ice and lost 3-1 in the second of a two-game skid.

"You seem a lot more relaxed lately, Jonathan," he says, voice recorder in hand. "Is it just confidence that the team has got what it takes to break out of the slump, or is it something else?"

Jonny's fairly tired – he'd been double-shifting and had spent nearly 24 minutes on the ice – but he blinks at that question, straightens his shoulders. "Do I?" he asks, and to his amazement he can feel a smile tugging at his lips. He gives in, lets himself grin. "Oh, I guess I do."

The band of reporters around him laugh a little.

"It's just, yeah, of course I think this team can do it, we certainly have the talent and the mental fortitude to – "

"Is it because you bought a pleasure slave?" someone – some _hack_ Jonny doesn't know – asks. "We’ve seen him accompanying you to games – "

Jonny's used to the tabloids speculating who Patrick is, of course – and most people are in consensus that Patrick's a pleasure slave, which, Jonny doesn't even know how they _know_ , given that Patrick never wears a slave cuff and the auction he was in was a closed auction – but no one has ever really asked him about it upfront. No one dares.

"Hockey questions only, please," Jonny says, trying to keep things polite, but the guy persists.

"Is there a reason you take him to games? I don't think the rest of the team do that – is this some sort of captain's privilege? Is he a distraction, though, in the locker room?"

Jonny can feel the smile slide off his face like water on glass.

"I believe it's none of your business what I decide to do with my own pleasure slave," he says coldly.

There's a collective gasp around the room, and camera flashes start going off. The BHTV camera guy who's videoing the interview sticks his head out from behind his camera and stares, wide-eyed, at Jonny.

Jonny thinks, _shit_.

\---

Patrick blows him the moment he gets home, doesn't even let him step into the house proper. He goes to his knees right there in the entryway before Jonny's even got his shoes off, and sucks him like he's dying for a taste of Jonny after only four days away. Jonny comes with his fingers carded through Patrick's curls, holding him on his dick so he can fuck up into Patrick's hot mouth and spill down his throat.

"Wow," he says breathlessly when Patrick's rocked back on his heels and wiped the back of his hand over his wet, red mouth, grinning up at him. "That's a pretty good welcome home."

"Yeah?" Patrick asks, looking pleased. Jonny's noticed, over the last few months, that Patrick really loves being praised, gets all soft and happy for it.

"Yeah," Jonny says, giving him what he wants. "That was good." He heaves Patrick to his feet and up on his tiptoes to kiss him.

They're still kissing in the doorway, Jonny with his back against the wall so Patrick can lean his weight on him, when Patrick pulls away from his mouth. "I saw your interview," he says.

"Hmm?" Jonny says, not really listening, because he's too distracted by the sight of Patrick's flushed cheeks and red lips.

"That post-game you did in Minnesota," Patrick says. "Did you know it's all over?"

"All over what?" Jonny asks, feeling his focus sharpening into something like mild dread.

"The Chicago papers picked it up, it's all over. And on all the sports sites online, too."

Jonny groans, thumping his head back against the wall, and then reluctantly shifts Patrick so he can grab his duffle from where he dumped it for his surprise blowjob, and begins walking into the house, heading for the kitchen. "I don't understand – everyone has pleasure slaves, why are they so obsessed with mine?"

"Because no one brings theirs to practices and games, but you do?" Patrick says, following behind. "And – this may be just a guess, but I'd definitely guess I'm right – because I don't have a slave cuff?"

Jonny had meant to buy Patrick one, the very first week he'd got him. He'd even gone into a shop selling collars and cuffs, but none of them seemed _right_.

"You can get a cuff custom-made too, sir," the girl behind the counter had said, and Jonny had told her he'd think about it and left.

And then – it had somehow never happened; Jonny had bought Patrick clothes, had arranged for his tailor to cut some suits for Patrick so he could bring Patrick out on game days and to events – but he'd clean forgotten about getting a cuff. He's reminded of it sometimes, when he sees other people's slaves with cuffs, but Patrick's never seemed uncomfortable without one. Jonny's never really _cared_ if Patrick wore one or not.

"You really want a cuff?" Jonny asks him now.

Patrick shrugs. "It's up to you? I don't mind either way. I always wore one in the past, so it's not like I'm not used to it."

"I prefer you without one," Jonny tells him, and then when Patrick smiles, pushes him against the fridge to kiss him breathless again.

\---

So – Jonny gets that they're unconventional. It's never really been brought up to him as such, but he knows the way he is with Patrick isn't exactly how someone treats a slave who's been debt bonded to them.

Each time he takes Patrick to a practice skate, Patrick's nearly always quiet, unsure, trailing after Jonny like a silent shadow. He'd kept his head low when Jonny introduced the guys to him after one of their practices, even though they'd been surprisingly well-behaved and had done nothing more than send Jonny puzzled looks over Patrick's bowed head.

He always lights up, though, when he's watching the practices proper, and that first time he agreed to go to a game, Jonny had dressed him in one of his new suits and taken him to the UC. He'd sat in the management box and, according to Heather from PR, leapt to his feet and pumped his fists in the air whenever Jonny threaded a good pass, or shut down an opposition breakaway, or won a faceoff.

Patrick seldom sits in the box anymore – he prefers being in the lower bowl, among the fans, where he can yell to his heart's content and wear Jonny's jersey, and where Jonny can see him on his feet, smile blooming on his face, when he scores a goal.

Heather had taken Jonny aside after the first pictures had appeared of Patrick watching morning skate and then leaving in Jonny's car, and of him following Jonny into the UC an hour before puck drop, both dressed in identical dark blue suits. "You sure you know what you're doing?" she'd asked.

"Yeah?" Jonny had said, and then winced internally at how uncertain he sounded. "I mean, yeah – it's not a big deal, all right? Patrick likes hockey, and he likes watching the team play."

"Okay," Heather had said slowly, like she was humouring a stubborn child. "But what do you want to say when people start asking who he is, find that out, and then begin questioning why Jonathan Toews is bringing a pleasure slave to games?"

Jonny had felt hot anger flare up in him. "I don't need to say anything."

"Even if you don't, people will find out," Heather said, frowning.

"I will not answer any questions pertaining to Patrick," Jonny said. "I'm well within my rights to do whatever I want when it comes to him – it's not illegal to bring a slave to your workplace, for fuck's sake."

They'd stared each other down for a minute, before Heather gave in.

"Fine," she said eventually. "Just be sure you're prepared for whatever, that's all."

\---

Jonny's mother had called him too, after the pictures.

"Maman," Jonny said, tiredly, "please don't start. I got enough of that from Heather already."

"I just want to know that you're certain of what you're doing, Jonathan," his mother said, the French coming warm and familiar down the phone. "I'm sure Patrick is a lovely boy, but you are not exactly being… proper, about him."

"Who's to tell me what is being _proper_ with Patrick?" Jonny had demanded. "He's mine, I bought him, so – why does everyone think it's all right to tell me how I should treat him?"

"Because – as sweet as that boy sounds, and as good as for you as you make him seem – he is merely a slave, Jonathan," his mother had said. "What if people talk about you, that you're unnaturally attached to a slave, or that you're abusing your position within the organization to parade Patrick around?"

"Oh my god," Jonny said exasperatedly, "it's just a hockey game, Maman."

"It's not just hockey, is it?" Andree said shrewdly.  

 

 

"Uh," Jonny said.

His mother had sighed. "I don't presume to tell you what you should do, Jonathan, you're a grown man," she said. "Just – be a little more careful, yes? There will be people who will not like what you do with Patrick, and they may make things difficult for him."

\---

It's November, a month after that phone call from his mother, that Jonny walks into the locker room after their OT loss to the Sharks to find Patrick sitting in a corner, one of the team doctors crouching at his feet. Ellen's hands are on Patrick's face, so Jonny can't see it, and he feels like his skin's been turned to ice.

"Patrick?" he calls, brushing past the media who are waiting to talk to him, heading straight for Patrick.

Ellen looks up as he nears them, and takes her hands away; Jonny can see that she's holding a ball of cotton, and it's red with blood. The strong antiseptic smell of alcohol drifts up to him as he catches Patrick's chin in his hand, tilts his face up.

There's an ugly cut on the corner of Patrick's bottom lip, and a faint blue-purple bruise around it. Almost like – like someone's punched Patrick and he's cut his lip open on his own teeth.

"What the fuck happened?" Jonny asks. There's fury, rising slowly in him and prickling under his skin. He doesn't know what he looks like, but his voice, when he speaks, sounds nothing like his usual; it's cold and brittle, and Ellen tears open another packet of antiseptic swabs, hands it to Patrick.

"Press it against the cut," she tells him. "Keep firm pressure on it; the bleeding should stop soon."

Patrick nods and holds the swab to his cut lip as instructed, but he winces when it touches his sore cut, and the rage in Jonny is threatening to spill over until he starts shouting, in front of the team, the media, everyone in the room.

"What happened?" he asks again, only dimly aware of Ellen quietly gathering her things and standing up next to him. She squeezes his shoulder briefly before going off - Jonny barely feels the touch.

Patrick looks up at him; Jonny can see the purplish edges of the bruise bloom beyond the square of cotton Patrick's holding, and he clenches his hands into fists, trying to keep his breathing steady.

"Tell me," he says, and Patrick shakes his head, narrowing his eyes at Jonny.

"Patrick – " he starts, but Patrick reaches up and grabs his fist, squeezing it and then pulling at his fingers until they unfold one by one.

 _Not now_ , Patrick mouths at him, and – yeah, okay, there are too many people around. He swings around, and the beats are standing about in the room, staring at him. The guys are silent, occasionally throwing glances at him, but no one's making a move to go over. Jonny doesn't know what kind of ferocious vibes he's throwing out.

Heather pushes into the room then, and starts chivvying everyone into place, telling the guys to hit the showers, directing the beats to Duncs and Hoss instead for the post-game interviews. There's something about her composed, take-charge attitude that permeates the room, and soon it's back to its usual bustle and movement, except for the corner where Patrick is sitting silent and still and Jonny's standing over him like a shield. Heather marches right up to them.

"To my office, now," she says, and Jonny briefly considers telling her to fuck off, but Patrick stands up.

"Coming?" he asks, looking sideways at Jonny, and Jonny – he follows as Patrick starts to walk.

\---

It's not good: Patrick had been sitting next to a group of six guys who'd been drinking throughout the game and getting more belligerent as it went on. They'd been talking smack about Jonny, and ordinarily Patrick would have tried to tune them out, except that one of them had said, loudly, that "Toews has grown soft since he bought himself a fuck toy – all his energy's going on screwing it instead of scoring goals."

"He's scoring in his p. slave's five hole, though," another of the guys had said, leering, and Patrick had turned around and told them to shut the fuck up about Tazer.

"What's it to you if we – oh, wait," said the first guy. "You're the slave he bought!" And he'd grabbed Patrick, pulling at him painfully. "You're not even that pretty, Tazer needs to re-evaluate his taste – "

Patrick had shoved at him, trying to break free, and the guy had just drawn back and landed one on Patrick's mouth, sending him spinning backwards and landing on the lap of some other poor dude.

"Let's see how good you suck dick now," the guy had sneered, and Patrick had lunged at him, only for the guy to draw back for another punch. Patrick had somehow twisted out of the way, and the punch had landed on the guy behind Patrick, who was there with his own group of slightly less loud bros.

It had turned into a free-for-all.

There were kids nearby, and outraged parents, and camera phones that had caught fucking _everything_.

Heather shakes her head, and temples her hands under her chin, staring at them both appraisingly.

"We'll try to smooth things over, but in the meantime – Jonathan, I told you, you can't bring Patrick to games."

Jonny's been angrier in his life. He knows he has. But right now, with the fury thrumming in his veins, he can't remember when. All he can see, strobing before his eyes, is the vivid cut on Patrick's mouth, the resigned look on Patrick's face when Heather was telling Jonny what happened.

"No," he says. "You're not punishing Patrick for getting hit, what the fuck."

"I'm trying to protect him, and you, and the organization," Heather says. "Do you have any idea how bad this looks? Do you know what people are going to say, now that your slave's started a fight?"

"He didn't – jesus christ," Jonny says. "He got hurt – who's the fucker who hit him? Are we doing anything about that?"

"No," Heather says, like she thinks he's an idiot. "It's all we can do now to try to control this – we are not doing anything to him, he could sue us."

"I'll fucking countersue," Jonny says, raising his voice.

Heather sighs. She takes off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Jonathan, I know you don't care right now, but I am trying to protect you both. Can you please let me do my job and keep Patrick away for now?"

"Fucking right, I don't care."

"Jonny," Patrick says, voice sounding hoarse, and it's the way Patrick says his name, soft and pleading, that calms him more than anything else.

"I – look, Heather," Jonny says. Maybe appealing to her better nature might work, he thinks. "You know what my schedule is like – I can't leave Patrick alone at home all the time. He likes watching hockey. It's all he can do – c'mon, you can't tell me to lock him at home. You can't tell me what to do with him. We've been over this."

There's a long, long pause where he stares at Heather, pouring all his will and stubbornness into his eyes, and Heather's the first to blink and look away.

"Keep him in the management box, then," she says. "For now, at least."

Jonny glances at Patrick; Patrick nods, eyeing Jonny beseechingly, and Jonny nods as well.

"Fine," he says.

\---

"Are you okay?" he asks when they're home and getting ready for bed, Patrick in the bathroom brushing his teeth.

"You've asked me that a million times, Jonny," Patrick calls.

"So much for my concern," Jonny yells back, flipping back the covers.

He's just slipping into bed when Patrick comes out, and he's naked. Jonny pauses, one knee on the bed, one hand holding the covers up, and stares. The cut on his lip has made it swell a little, turned his mouth crimson.

Patrick wanders over and ducks under Jonny's raised arm to slide into the bed, where he stretches out on it on his stomach. legs splayed open, arms above his head.

"Fuck me?" he asks, turning his face towards Jonny. The cheek with the bruise and cut is visible, and something in Jonny's heart stutters even as his cock begins to thicken up, like a Pavlovian response to Patrick's words.

"But – your mouth," Jonny says.

"I don't need my mouth for your cock in my ass, Jonny," Patrick says, and – yeah, Jonny's cock's definitely on the way to hardtown now.

"You're in pain," Jonny says, and Patrick rolls his eyes.

"I'm fine," he says. "It doesn't even hurt anymore now, you can kiss me even – see?" He tongues at the cut, and Jonny groans.

"What the – god, Patrick, what do you do to me," he says, flinging the covers off and kicking his boxers off, climbing on top of Patrick, stretching out over him, pressing him into the mattress. Patrick's skin is soft and warm, and Jonny noses at the muscle at the base of his neck, flexing as Patrick shifts beneath him.

"Yeah, like that," Patrick encourages as Jonny bites in, not too hard, but enough to leave a small red mark when he pulls back. He slides his tongue over it, and Patrick moans.

"Yeah, Jonny, come on," he says, wriggling until Jonny's cock slots nicely into the inviting warm cleft of his ass.

Jonny leans in to kiss him; he's gentle at first, but Patrick's moaning and moving under him, Jonny's cock sliding dry in the crease of his ass, only a little bit of precome to slick the way. Patrick groans when Jonny sucks a little at his cut, and then kisses him, hard and frantic.

Jonny's never fucked anyone quite as responsive as Patrick; it's frankly amazing how much Patrick loves being fucked and isn't ashamed to show it, and it gets Jonny going like no one else has been able to do for him.

He stops sucking kisses into Patrick's shoulders long enough to get the lube, and then sits up on Patrick's thighs so he can thumb at his hole, rub lube around it. They fuck often enough that Patrick doesn't need too much prep, and anyway, Patrick likes a little sting to it, likes to be able to feel Jonny.

He slathers lube on his dick, and then has to grip it when Patrick pushes back onto his knees and lifts his ass into the air, face and chest still pressed to the bed.

"Fuck me, please," Patrick begs, and he's never shy about asking for what he wants but he doesn't often beg like this, like he's desperate for Jonny's cock. "Please, Jonny, fuck me, fuck me – _oh_ –"

Jonny presses into him, slow and steady and inexorable; Patrick opens up for him sweetly, easily, panting into his pillow, and works his hips back until Jonny's thighs are flush against his ass and Jonny's all the way in, pushing with his hips, rolling them just enough to make Patrick moan.

"Good enough for you?" Jonny asks, fucking in and out in short little thrusts, not more than an inch or two either way. Patrick makes a soft, punched-out sound when Jonny drags his cock over his prostate.

"Come on, Pat," Jonny says, stopping. "Tell me: good enough?"

Patrick's got his eyes squeezed shut and his hands fisted in the sheets, but his tongue darts out to lick at his lower lip, toy with the cut in it. Jonny squeezes his hips where's he's holding them, and Patrick blinks his eyes open, panting.

"No," he says, and pushes back, fucking himself on Jonny's cock, working his glutes so Jonny can watch them tighten and relax as his ass clamps and squeezes Jonny. "More – I need more, please, Jonny – "

Jonny drags his cock out until Patrick's hole is open around the flared, pink head of it, and then snaps his hips in hard, punching a wet choking moan out of Patrick.

"Like this?" he asks, pumping his hips, Patrick meeting him with every thrust so his thighs slap against Patrick's ass, pinking it up. "You want it like this?"

Patrick sounds like it's taking all the spare energy in his body to reply. "Yes," he says, voice pitched high and needy. "Yes – _Jonny_ –"

"Fuckin' love it when you say my name," Jonny grunts, leaning down so he can lick at the beads of sweat along the knobs of Patrick's spine, close his teeth over bunching muscle. "You're gonna scream it when I make you come."

Patrick's shaking beneath him, trembling like a leaf in the wind, entire body wound up as Jonny slams into him. He's squeezing down on Jonny on every outthrust, and Jonny's going to come way too soon if Patrick keeps doing that.

"Shit," he says, and pulls out completely, cock bobbing over Patrick's red, fucked-open hole. Patrick groans, and pushes back against the hold Jonny has on his hips, flailing back with one arm to try to get to Jonny's dick.

"Jonny – why'd you – don't stop, please, fuck – "

"Okay, okay," Jonny says, stroking a hand over the sleek bowed curve of Patrick's back, and then pushes back in; Patrick's head lolls on the pillow as he moans, long and low.

"Don’t come yet," Jonny tells him, and then when Patrick doesn't respond, doesn't seem like he's paying attention to anything but the steady in-and-out of Jonny's cock inside him, Jonny stops and slaps his ass, hard enough for the flesh to ripple.

"Fuck," Patrick says, and his eyes snap open, but he's breathing hard and still trying to rock back on Jonny's cock, so Jonny takes it as a good sign.

"I said, don't come yet," Jonny repeats, and Patrick makes a disappointed little sound, buries his face in the pillow. Jonny smacks his ass again, and Patrick gasps, clenching down tight.

"You can't do these things to me if you don't want me to come," Patrick says when he turns his head to the side, cheek pressed into the pillow. His mouth is open and swollen and Jonny wants to press a finger into his cut, make it redder. So he does it, not too hard, and Patrick gasps again and scrabbles for his dick, holding it tight at the base.

Jonny laughs and takes his finger away, slapping Patrick's ass one last time for good measure.

It's over fairly quickly after that; Patrick's clenching around him in little ripples of muscle, unconsciously tightening as he tries not to come. Jonny's orgasm builds up fast, heat radiating from his belly out to his fingers and toes, like he's containing a firework within an enclosed space. When he finally comes, his vision whites out for a split second as he shoves his cock into Patrick as deep as it can go, holding Patrick's ass to him while he spills inside in pulse after pulse that seem to go on forever.

"Wow," Jonny says, breathing hard. He lets his cock slide out of Patrick, still hard, and watches a thick trickle of come follow it out.

"Jonny," Patrick says, pleading.

"Yeah, I'm here," Jonny says. He can't help it; he takes his cock in one hand and guides it back into Patrick, fucking his come deep into him. Patrick's moaning and writhing around it, but Jonny's fucking him too slow to get him off, he knows. Patrick's begging again by the time Jonny's cock softens enough to slip out of Patrick, so he ducks down and licks over Patrick's hole; it's wet with his come, and Jonny wriggles his tongue in, listening to Patrick's sweet sharp gasps.

"Fuck," he says against Patrick's hole, "you taste good."

"Oh shit," Patrick says, sounding too far gone to listen to whatever Jonny's saying, "oh fuck, Jonny, yeah, lick me – "

He's pushing his ass back, fucking Jonny's tongue and mouth; his come is salty and tangy on his tongue, and Jonny seals his mouth over Patrick's hole and sucks, lapping his tongue against it.

Patrick almost shouts, back curving like a drawn bow as he arches upwards, and Jonny reaches between his spread thighs and takes hold of his cock, hard and leaking all over the sheets.

It takes only two tugs before Patrick's coming, crying Jonny's name out loud and jerking in his hold, come spurting over Jonny's fist. Jonny's got the flat of his tongue pressed to Patrick's hole, so he can feel it when it flutters and clenches against nothing as Patrick comes hard enough to slump, uncaring, into the puddle of his wet spot.

Jonny gives one last lick at him, and laughs when Patrick whines feebly, stirring.

He fetches a wet cloth from the bathroom and manages to persuade Patrick to roll over. The sheets are ruined, but whatever – his cleaning slave will change them the next day. He concentrates on wiping down Patrick, cleaning the come off his stomach, as Patrick blinks sleepy blue eyes at him and licks at his cut, redder than ever before.

"Intense, huh?" Jonny says, when he's dumped the cloth in the laundry basket and spooned up behind Patrick. He can feel Patrick's ass, still sticky, but that's how he likes Patrick, filthy inside with his come.

Patrick twists until they're face to face; his eyes are already at half-mast, almost asleep, but he kisses Jonny once, twice. "I really like it when you stand up for me," he says, so soft that Jonny almost doesn't catch it at first.

"It's nothing special," Jonny begins.

"It is," Patrick insists. "You don't treat me like a – like a slave."

Jonny wants to protest, but then – "You're not _just_ a slave," he says.

Patrick smiles tiredly. "But that's what I am. And you – I like that you don't treat me like one."

Jonny has nothing to say to that, so he pushes the loose curls off Patrick's forehead and kisses him until he's asleep and breathing softly against Jonny's lips.

 

 

\---

Patrick's birthday falls right in the middle of their yearly circus trip, but Jonny's already made up his mind to take Patrick with him. There are some guys who take their pleasure slaves with them on every single road trip, like they're afraid they're going to run away if they're gone for too long – but Jonny usually brings Patrick along only if he's away for longer than four or five days. They're playing both Winnipeg and Buffalo, and well – Jonny's mother kind of really wants to meet Patrick, and Jonny kind of really wants Patrick to see his family again.

He's had Patrick for nearly two months, and he knows almost nothing about Patrick's history before he was bought, before he'd become a pleasure slave. Jonny gives Patrick free rein in a lot of things – he allows him to call his parents, for instance – but he doesn't know if Patrick does any of the things he allows, doesn't even know if Patrick appreciates it. He never tells Jonny if he's called his family at all, and Jonny can't even guess at it; there is little to no change in Jonny's monthly phone bills, no spikes in the billing to let him know that Patrick's been making calls to a different area code.

It makes Jonny wonder if Patrick's parents were the ones who sold him into debt bondage, and if so, maybe he's not exactly doing Patrick a favour by telling him to call them and give them updates on how he's doing.

He finds himself thinking, a lot, about Patrick's past; it's unseemly, he knows, to be so curious about a slave bought purely to give him pleasure, but he's so intensely curious about it, and it only gets worse the better he knows Patrick, like a needling itch under his skin that he desperately wants to scratch.

So he does the only thing he knows he can: he asks Patrick about it one night when Patrick's flopped bonelessly on his chest, breath still evening out, fucked into a mess and already drifting into sleep.

"Hey, Patrick," he says, twining a finger round a soft spiral of a golden curl and tugging gently.

"Hmm?" Patrick asks into Jonny's shoulder.

"I was thinking – and, I guess, you don't have to answer if you don’t want to, but – why don't you talk more to your parents?"

Patrick lifts his head then, just a little, enough to peek up at Jonny. "What do you mean?"

"I mean – I get the bills, you know that, right? You hardly call them. Do you – not want to speak to them?"

Patrick looks confused, like Jonny's making him think too hard right after fucking his brains out – and, well, it's sort of true. "What makes you think – I do, of course I do, I miss them a lot – but – "

"But what?" Jonny prompts.

"You just said it – you get the bills – I can't call them all the time, it costs too much –"

And – oh. _Oh._ Jonny gets it, and he simultaneously wants to kiss and shake Patrick.

"Did you really not call them as much as you wanted, because you were worried I'd tell you off for spending money?" Jonny asks incredulously.

Patrick pushes up with his hands on Jonny's chest so he's finally sitting up and can look down at Jonny, ass on Jonny's belly and smearing sticky lube and come on it. "I guess?" he says, and he looks both uncertain and sheepish and Jonny just – Jonny hates it. Jonny doesn't think Patrick should be unsure and tentative around him, ever.

"I don't care about that, you gotta know that," he tells Patrick, and Patrick frowns a little, worrying at his lower lip, full and reddened from Jonny kissing him earlier. Jonny grips him by the hips, gives him a little shake.

"Pat," he starts. "I don't – you know I don't care about that, right? I told you ages ago, you can do whatever you want."

"I know that," Patrick says, almost snappily. He's still chewing on his lip in what Jonny's come to realize is a nervous tic. "It's just – "

"Just what?"

"I guess I have to, I don't know. Get used to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I – my previous owners – well. They were nothing like you."

Jonny blinks up at Patrick, who's got his head tipped down, blue eyes downcast so he's not looking directly at Jonny. It takes Jonny a moment to parse what Patrick said, and then he feels like a wave of ice water has crashed over him; his entire body goes cold.

"Are you saying they – they treated you badly?" He thinks of how Patrick was when Jonny had first bought him, silent and waiting for orders before he'd even move; and then he thinks of how Patrick had seemed so bold to him, at his auction, before reverting to that eerie obedience and then slowly unlearning all that enough to be able to carry on a conversation and even chirp Jonny without looking the way he looks now – and Jonny cups a hand around the back of Patrick's neck, squeezing, feeling as if the temperature in the room's dropped several degrees.

"What! No! God, Jonny, no, no, never – " Patrick says, head snapping up, legs tightening around Jonny's hips. He leans down and kisses Jonny, peppering sweet little kisses on his lips, his chin, his cheeks. "Jesus. Don't take it the wrong way, Jonny, they weren't bad to me. They didn't beat me, or anything like that."

"Yeah?" Jonny asks, still doubtful.

"Yeah, I swear it," Patrick says, sitting upright again. "Look, I'll tell you – you never asked about them, so I never thought it necessary, but if you're going to think they - _abused_ me, that's not right."

"Okay," Jonny says slowly.

"They were a married couple, all right? The guy was named Patrick too, but I always called him and his wife Mr. and Mrs. Sharp. They weren't like you, all 'call me Jonny'; they expected me to show them respect, but they were good to me."

The name doesn’t sound familiar to Jonny at all, but that means nothing – plenty of people are wealthy enough to own pleasure slaves without being recognizable celebrities.

"I was a house slave first – you know, I've got three little sisters, my family isn't wealthy, and we were determined that at least my sisters get to go to college, so my father borrowed crazily for that and to keep his business afloat, and it didn't really work, so once I reached the legal age for it I offered to sell myself into debt bondage. Being a house slave didn't bother me, I just had to cook and clean and garden and look after babies, it was no big deal."

Jonny thinks of Patrick, at seventeen, small and away from his family and scrubbing floors, and something in his heart aches a little, enough to put a lump in his throat. Patrick must see it in his face, because he slaps him gently on the chest.

"Stop looking like the Canucks just threw you out of the playoffs again. I said it was no big deal.”

"Like the Canucks even could," Jonny says, on autopilot, and Patrick laughs. God, Jonny loves his smile.

And then he stops in the midst of reaching up to thumb at Patrick's dimples, because wow, where did _that_ come from?

Patrick clearly thinks Jonny's waiting for him to continue, rather than sorting through his internal monologue about how Patrick's smile is sunny and open and so lovely, because he says, "So – the Sharps bought me. They'd just got married, and Mr. Sharp was the head of PR for some major marketing and PR agency headquartered in Chicago."

"And then?"

"Then – well, I worked for them, just doing the menial things – but believe me, Jonny, they were always good to me. Never laid a finger on me, never raised their voices, gave me gifts, kinda treated me like part of the family, actually. The only thing they wanted me to do was basically to be as unobtrusive as I could, to ask for permission for things, so I kind of got into the habit.

"But then when I'd been with them for about two years, the Sharps sat me down and asked me if I'd consider having my bond converted into a pleasure contract. And, you know, that pays my debt off a lot faster, and the Sharps treated me well; I didn't think I'd mind being a pleasure slave for them. And that's what they did, once I turned twenty and was legal for pleasure bondage."

"And did they then – " Jonny begins, but Patrick presses his fingers to his mouth to keep him quiet. The tips of his fingers are cool against Jonny's lips, and he breathes on them, trying to keep Patrick warm.

"No, Jonny – I keep telling you, they were good to me. They were a married couple, so they didn't even try anything too, you know, wild. They used my mouth, mainly, and they liked playing with me using toys, and once in a while they liked to have me fuck her, or him fuck me, while the other watched, but it wasn't anything that they weren't sure I wasn't fine with. Sure, they demanded I respect them, but they respected me too."

"You keep saying I'm not like them, but then you insist they treated you well, and I – "

"Because you're not," Patrick says firmly. "You're – shit, Jonny, what can I say? You don't mind that I'm not all that good or subservient, that I maybe embarrass you sometimes, especially with that fight I got into. You let me do literally whatever I want, you let me tag along with you to games and restaurants, you – " he breaks off, looking like he's thinking of what to say next. "You treat me like an _equal_ , not like a slave. And when I was with the Sharps – I was always conscious that I was a slave. They didn't kiss me, they didn't hold me in their bed. I had a slave cuff and everything, and I had to be obedient."

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Patrick says, rolling his eyes but smiling down at Jonny fondly. "And you know the rest. Mrs. Sharp got pregnant, and they had to be transferred to Dallas to oversee a new branch opening there, and they decided it would be too much to have a pleasure slave when they'd have their hands full with a new baby and a busier job. But – they did their research, found a good trader and placed me with him, so I'd have a better chance of finding a good owner, at least."

And – huh. Jonny hadn’t even considered that, that Patrick's owners were that concerned about placing him. There's a tense little knot in his chest that feels like it's loosening, and he exhales, slowly.

"I guess I lucked out when I went to that auction, huh?" he asks, trying to keep things light. He's still holding Patrick's hips, thumb rubbing circles into the soft skin over the crease between his thigh and pelvis.

"Jonny," Patrick says, laughing, "I picked _you_. Or should I say, I really wanted you to pick me."

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean, I saw you there, and I recognized you right away. And I told you, the Sharps liked hockey, let me watch it with them, so of course I knew who you were – and I guess I thought that I hadn't ever heard any bad press about Jonathan Toews, that everyone's always going on about how nice you are – so I figured it wouldn't be a hardship if you bought me." He frowns a little, licking at his lips. "I did think you weren't going to, though, when the price started going up so high. I still think you were crazy."

It's just – it's all too much for Jonny to take in. "Are you serious?" he manages. "You wanted me?"

"Yeah, obviously. I knew you were a good person, I knew you probably wouldn't treat me too badly if I went with you – and well, have you seen yourself, Jonny? I'm a pleasure slave, but I'd at least like to be used by someone I find attractive – " he stops, suddenly. "I'm – are you mad at me? That I tricked you?"

Jonny stares up at Patrick. He'd hardly call it being tricked – it was Patrick being smart. Patrick trying to influence his life, to the tiny extent that he could, trying to ensure that he'd be picked by someone who would be good to him. He remembers the horrible man whom he'd been bidding against, and his blood runs cold as he thinks about how close he was to losing Patrick to him, and then who knows what would have become of Patrick, and his smile, and his irrepressible spirit?

"I wanted you too," he says, and pulls Patrick down to kiss him.

He's not really trying to turn it into anything more, just trading lazy, wet kisses and taking in the sex-musky scent of Patrick and the weight of his solid body over his own, but when they finally separate, he says teasingly, grinning, "And I suppose I should be flattered you think I'm hot? You think I'm _hot_."

"You're a pro athlete, Jonny, it's like, in your job description to be hot," Patrick says, eyes gratifyingly unfocused from a few minutes of kissing. But then they sharpen, and he tilts his head, looking at Jonny consideringly, a corner of his mouth turning up in a smirk and his dimple flashing. It's a look Jonny's come to be familiar with, one that promises good things for him.

"Okay," Patrick says decisively. "I love blowing hot guys, so – " he wriggles down Jonny's body to where Jonny's dick is lying against his thigh, swollen but not quite hard, and swallows it down unceremoniously, evincing no issues with the fact that Jonny's cock is still sticky with come and lube from where he'd just fucked Patrick twenty minutes ago.

Jonny's no longer a teenager, but Patrick's fucking mouth just does _not_ care. Patrick works skillfully at it until Jonny's hard and gasping and coming in hot spurts deep down Patrick's throat; he's got Jonny's cock so far in, like he doesn't even need to breathe as long as he can blow Jonny.

"Worth it," Jonny says drowsily later, flapping his hand on Patrick's shoulder while Patrick sits up on him again, fisting his own cock, hard and red just from sucking Jonny off. "Worth every cent, even if you think I was crazy."

Patrick laughs, a laugh that's choked off once he gets going on jacking himself in strong, precise pulls of his fist, and then they're not talking anymore until Patrick comes all over Jonny's abs.

\---

The very next day, Jonny wanders into his study to find Patrick on the phone, talking animatedly. He gives an involuntary jerk when Jonny comes in, like he's going to hang up, but relaxes when Jonny waves at him to carry on and grabs his laptop before moving to the living room.

Patrick comes out ten minutes later, eyes sparkling and happy, and Jonny asks, "Your parents?"

"Mm-hmm," Patrick says.

"That reminds me," Jonny says. "The circus trip is in two weeks – I'm taking you along."

"Okay," Patrick says, fiddling with the remote and clearly not paying much attention.

"We'll be playing Winnipeg, so my parents can see you – and we're going to Buffalo too, so I'll be happy to arrange for tickets for your sisters and parents, and have them sit with you."

It's almost comical how Patrick swings around at that, mouth dropping open; his eyes are wide and disbelieving. "You – what? What?"

"You can thank me later," Jonny says, grinning, feeling smug as all hell.

Patrick drops the remote. "Fuck you," he says, but Jonny can see his bottom lip trembling and his eyes start looking alarmingly watery, so he just leans back on the couch and grins. Patrick practically flings himself at Jonny, climbing into his lap and hands clutching at Jonny's shoulders; Jonny winds his arms around Patrick to steady him, leans up to meet the eager press of Patrick's mouth.

"God," Patrick says into his mouth, squeezing the thick slope of his trapezoid muscles, "you are just – you are so good to me. _So_ good."

And Jonny – Jonny's never before felt this glorious, contented happiness that he does now. Getting drafted third overall was a surge of pure exhilaration; winning the Cup was a wild tsunami of elation; this is a warm, satisfied glow that feels like it's suffusing him entirely, from the tips of his hair down to his very toes.

\---

They start off the road trip with a bang – winning with a shutout against the Flames and scraping past Vancouver by the skin of their teeth with Jonny scoring the game winner in the final two minutes of the third, so by the time they hit Winnipeg Jonny's in a great mood, excited to be home, eager to see his family.

The plane gets into Winnipeg early in the morning, and it's on the way to the team hotel that Jonny first notices that Patrick's jittery. He's staring out the window of the bus, teeth working at his plump lower lip, a slight frown winking in and out between his eyebrows, and he keeps shaking out his leg like something's tickling him there. Jonny puts a hand on his kneecap, stills the short jerky motions of it.

"Are you okay?" Jonny asks quietly, leaning over to whisper in Patrick's ear.

Patrick nods, a quick jerk of his head, and goes right back to looking out of the window and licking at his lips.

He's nervous. Jonny – well, Jonny gets it. Slaves are like pieces of furniture, meant to be used, not treated like part of the family. But Jonny's parents have _seen_ Patrick – seen him walking into the room in the background while Jonny's Skyping his mom, have spoken to Patrick on the phone occasionally when they call the house looking for Jonny and Patrick picks up, and a couple of times, had directly spoken to Patrick through video calls, while Patrick blushed furiously and waved hi shyly before wandering off again.

So Jonny doesn’t get why Patrick's so anxious about a simple brunch with his parents; if anything, Jonny's the one who ought to be nervous. His parents have never approved of any of his exes that they've met, but whatever – Jonny can deal. And Patrick is - well, he's not a boyfriend, technically. He keeps his hand on Patrick's knee until Patrick lets his own hand fall on it, twining their fingers together and squeezing.

They manage an hour's nap in the hotel before waking up to get ready, but when Jonny's brushed his teeth and come out of the bathroom, Patrick's standing in jeans in front of the bed, chewing on his lip again. He's got at least four shirts spread out over the bed, and when Jonny goes over and stares curiously at him, he turns pleading eyes on him.

"What _are_ you doing?" Jonny asks.

Patrick gestures vaguely to the mess on the bed. "Just – could you help me? Pick something to wear?"

Oh, jesus. "Oh my god, Pat. It's just a brunch, nothing fancy. Just wear whatever."

Patrick just stares at him, tongue darting out to wet his lips.

Jonny sighs and points to a soft cream henley. Patrick's worn it several times and he likes how it sets off Patrick's broad shoulders and is clingy enough to show the outline of his abs. "That one. You look good in that one."

Patrick snatches it so quickly and yanks it down over his head so hard that when his head emerges from it, his neatly slicked curls are ruffled askew.

Jonny steps close and runs his hands through his hair, smoothing down the tendrils sticking out. Patrick constantly despairs of his hair – he makes Jonny get him some special sort of conditioning shampoo for curly hair, and whenever he goes out he tries to slick it back all the time – but Jonny much prefers it without all the goo and product in it making it crunchy and stiff. He scrunches it a little in his hands, enough to make the curls fluff and bounce, and then smoothes the henley over Patrick's shoulders and chest.

"You look perfect," he says. "It'll be fine. They'll love you."

Patrick still looks worried, like he's going to meet his prospective in-laws instead of just having a simple meal with – with –

 _Oh,_ , Jonny thinks blankly. _Oh, shit._

\---

Jonny's the only one who notices Patrick shaking just a little as he shakes Andree's hand – he's the only one who knows Patrick well enough to parse all his tells, so when they're finally seated he grasps Patrick's hand under the table, a solid reassuring weight on his thigh.

At least Patrick sounds steady enough when he speaks, Jonny thinks; a little more quiet than usual but polite and forthcoming, and at one point when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom Jonny gives him a quick peck on the cheek, at which he turns a bright red and stumbles over his words before nearly running into the café.

Andree is extremely amused. "He is adorable, Jonathan," she says, switching into French once Patrick is out of earshot.

"He can be," Jonny says, even as he feels his chest suffused full with pride at any praise for Patrick.

"Did you tell him stories, because he seems terrified of us?" she asks, tipping her head at Jonathan's father seated next to her, face red from the wine he'd been drinking throughout brunch.

"What? No!" Jonny says. "He's seen you, Maman, he's just – I don't know. I don't know. He's acting like he's meeting – in-laws, or something."

"You mean he's not?" Andree says, and Bryan starts laughing while Jonny sputters.

Andree pats his arm. "Jokes aside, Jonathan, you look good, darling. You look so much more relaxed and happy. Whatever that boy is doing, he needs to keep at it."

And of course, that just puts images in Jonny's mind about exactly what Patrick does for him – was bought to do – and the way he'd looked spread out on the white sheets of the bed in their Vancouver hotel room, panting and fucked-out and messy, and he starts coughing, just to hide the flush rising in his cheeks.

Bryan's coughing too, and Jonny figures that his father's thought the same thing, which – no. _No._

Jonny's mother ignores them both and pats Jonny again until he finally looks up at her, willing himself to stop embarrassing himself in front of his parents. "He's a good boy, Jonathan. He's good for you."

"Maman, you've never liked anyone I brought to meet you," Jonny says, awed.

"They weren't good enough for you," she says.

"Patrick's not my _boyfriend_."

"So why are you worried about what I'm thinking, hm, _cher_?"

Jonny snaps his mouth shut, and his mother laughs, patting his cheek fondly. "I'm joking, _cher_. I think he's a lovely boy."

"I guess he is," Jonny says, finally, and smiles.

When they finally leave, Jonny's parents promising to be at the game the next night, Andree pulls Patrick into a hug and he goes, surprised but pleased, and wraps his arms around her tightly.

"You're such a good boy," Andree says, almost cooing, and busses his cheek with a quick kiss. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Patrick turns a bright pink, but Jonny can see him squeeze Andree a little tighter, a little longer, before he finally lets go.

It's great, it's all good, and the mild tension that Jonny didn't even know he was carrying around eases a little inside him.

\---

There is a part of Jonny that worries, stupidly, about Patrick during away games, especially after the fight. He's in the press box or the locker room most of the time, whenever he follows Jonny out of Chicago, but sometimes he wants to sit in the seats, amongst other fans, and Patrick's fairly recognizable even outside Chicago by now.

It hasn't been bad so far; Patrick does get recognized sometimes, but people either leave him alone or ask to take photos with him – which, neither Jonny nor Patrick understand this; what's so interesting about a pleasure slave just because he happens to sleep with Jonny? – and there are photos floating about the Twittersphere of Patrick leaning into camera frames with excited fans, dimpling and pleased and a little shy.

This time, though, he skates out without any fear – his mother had sent him a photo of the three of them in their seats, Patrick grinning and giving a thumbs up between her and Bryan, all of them wearing Toews 19 jerseys. When Jonny's skating laps around MTS Centre during warm ups, he pauses in front of the away bench, scanning the seats behind it until he sees them three rows up.

His parents wave at him, and Patrick's grinning so wide that his dimples are cutting deep indentations in his cheeks. Jonny tosses them a wink and skates on.

The Jets have always kind of been the Hawks' bogey team; they've been matched up twice already this season and lost both times, and Jonny's determined not to rack up a third loss, especially not when Patrick's there with his parents, looking pleased as punch and completely happy and at home with them.

Jonny's had girlfriends – and boyfriends – whom his parents didn't give two shits about, and it's both a relief and a source of pride to him that they _like_ Patrick.

Whether it's his energy and happiness permeating the locker room or something else, Jonny doesn’t know – but the Blackhawks hit the ground running, with Panarin getting on the scoreboard three minutes into the first period and then Shawsy knocking a rebound past Hutchinson in the middle of the second.

During the second intermission, Jonny checks his phone quickly and finds a message from Patrick: _Be better, captain!_

That little shit.

So it's only right and natural, really, that twelve minutes into the third with the clock ticking down and the Jets throwing all bodies at the Hawks net, Hoss manages to carry the puck past the blue line on a penalty kill, drops a pinpoint-perfect pass to Jonny, and it's the easiest thing in the world for Jonny to tear up the ice on the breakaway and flick the puck over Hutchinson's shoulder, stick-side.

The arena erupts in boos, Jonny grins as he skates to the bench for the customary fistbumps, and when he glances up, Patrick's on his feet, fists in the air, glee written all over his face. Andree and Bryan are clapping, looking delighted, and as Jonny watches, his mother wraps her arms around Patrick for a quick hug.

Patrick purses his lips and blows Jonny a kiss when he sees Jonny looking at them, grinning, and Jonny makes sure to roll his eyes slowly enough that Patrick can't miss the movement.

Jonny's in the midst of his post-game interview when he sees his parents and Patrick being ushered into the room, and once he wraps up Patrick makes his way through the throng of people to give him a hug, stink, sweat and all.

"That was so hot, Jonny," he whispers into Jonny's ear. "That breakaway – knew you could do it. I'm going to blow you _so hard_ when we get back tonight."

And – jesus, Jonny pops a boner so fast, in front of his smiling parents, that he thinks he might pass out from all the blood in his head rushing downwards to his dick. He's so glad he didn't take his pads off before the interview.

Later, once they're safely in the privacy of their hotel room and Jonny's texted his parents thanks and goodnight – and ignored more of Andree's pointed texts about how wonderful and sweet and perfect Patrick is – Patrick makes good on his promise.

 

 

 

\---

Buffalo is next, the fourth in their six-game road trip, and in their hotel, Patrick requests something that both surprises and worries Jonny.

"I haven't been home in so many years," he explains. "I'd really like to go back, just for a while. And then I'll go to the arena with my parents and my sisters. Can I? Please?"

Jonny hesitates; Patrick's never really asked him for anything before, never requested something for himself. And yet – the idea of letting Patrick walk out of the hotel, alone, to the home he grew up and the family who misses him – it's the worst kind of torment, knowing that if Patrick chose to leave and never come back, he wouldn’t have the heart to compel Patrick to come back anyway, even if he'd be within his legal rights to.

Patrick must see his thoughts churning on his face, because he catches Jonny's cheeks in his palms and tiptoes for a kiss. "I'm not going anywhere," he says, muffled against Jonny's lips. "I'll come to the game. I promise."

It's surprisingly hard for Jonny to let Patrick step out of the door, but he keeps his mouth shut, even after the door's swung shut behind him.

\---

Jonny can't help it – the moment he comes out for warm-ups in the First Niagara Centre, he looks at where Patrick's supposed to be, heart hammering away in his chest. He's so anxious, he actually skims over Patrick once, and almost starts panicking, thinking Patrick isn't there, isn't coming back; but Patrick stands up then and waves at him, and Jonny's eyes catch on him like cloth on a hook.

Patrick looks fine. Patrick's smiling at Jonny like nothing's changed, like he hasn't decided to run away and return to his family – and now that Jonny's looking, there's a woman sitting next to him with long dark hair, who must be his mother. She's clinging on to Patrick's hand and her eyes are red-rimmed like she spent all afternoon crying, but when Patrick says something to her and points at Jonny, she gives him a watery smile.

There's a plump bald man next to her, and three teenage girls, clustered close to Patrick, all of them staring at Jonny. One of the girls leans across to say something to Patrick, and whatever she says has Patrick swatting at her while the other girls laugh.

They look like such a _normal_ family, so delighted to be at a Sabres game, that for the very first time Jonny feels a pang of guilt, that despite the contract which states he owns Patrick, he's keeping Patrick from everything he loves.

He turns abruptly and skates away.

\---

Jonny's heart is not in the game, not until the second period at least, but he manages to get in a few respectable checks and shots on goal, and the Blackhawks still run out 3-2 winners anyway.

It’s not his turn tonight for post-game interviews – Artemi got two goals, so he's having all the attention – and he heads straight for the showers. He's exiting into the locker room with just a towel around his waist, most people already gone, when Patrick waylays him with a hand on his wrist.

"Jonny!" he says, and – god, he looks and sounds so excited and happy, blue eyes bright and dimples deep in his cheeks. He doesn’t even seem to notice that Jonny's dripping wet and nearly naked, not even an appreciative glance. "Jonny, here – you need to meet – "

Jonny plants his feet and pulls Patrick back. "Like this?" he hisses, glancing down at himself. He's – truthfully, he's not certain about meeting Patrick's family. He doesn't know what they think of him, being the man who bought their son for sexual servitude; he doesn't want to think that Patrick might request to stay with them. He doesn’t know what he'd say or do, if Patrick does ask for that.

Patrick cocks an eyebrow. "Yes, Jonny," he says patiently. "I'm sure they've seen all your interviews and photoshoots by now, anyway. Most people know what your body looks like."

"Sure," Jonny says, sarcastic, but allows himself to be dragged to where the Kane family are standing, looking awed and wide-eyed, his free hand clutching the knot of his towel at his waist for dear life.

"I am sorry," Patrick's mother says immediately, "we told Patrick not to bother you, but he insisted – "

"Not a bother at all," Jonny says. He wishes he had a lot more clothing on. "Pleasure, Mrs. Kane," he adds, and sticks his hand out before mentally wincing at his choice of words.

Patrick's mother doesn’t seem to notice, though, just grasps his hand in both of hers and looks up at him. Jonny is alarmed to see her eyes swimming with tears; holy shit, it's been two seconds and she's already probably gearing up to beg for her son back –

"I wanted to thank you – for taking such good care of Patrick," she says, voice shaking. "You have been so good to him, he's been so happy. And please, call me Donna."

Well, that was certainly not what Jonny was expecting.

"Come on, dear, don't scare the kid off," Patrick's father says, putting a gentle arm around her. "I'm Pat senior, but call me Tiki."

"I'm Erica," one of the girls says, jostling her way forward. "I'm second after Pat. And you’re Jonny."

"He's well aware that he's Jonny," Patrick interjects.

"Yes, but is he aware – "

"Shut up, Erica – "

"Come _on_ , Pat – "

"I told you not to harangue him – "

Pat senior shakes his head. "It's always like this when they get together," he tells Jonny; and then, to Jonny's alarm, his faded blue eyes start looking glassy. "I've missed seeing Pat with the girls."

"But – what we really wanted to tell you, Jonny, is that we're so grateful," Donna says. "He seems so happy, and you allow him to talk to us – I don’t think you know what a gift it is for us."

Jonny shifts uncomfortably and tugs his towel up higher. "Uh, it's no big deal," he says.

"It is a big deal," Donna insists. "We never – so many times we worried about him, all these years – and we never got to see him, but he looks good, Jonny. He looks well taken care of, and that's down to you."

Jonny wants to run away and hide his face in a jersey, probably.

Fortunately Patrick senses his predicament and comes to the rescue after disentangling himself from the girls. He takes Jonny's arm, and asks quietly, "Do you think you could arrange for a cab? To take them home?"

"Of course," Jonny begins; and then he whips his head around to stare at Patrick. "And you – what about you?"

Patrick tilts his face up, the beginnings of a smile playing about his lips. "Me? I'm going back with you, obviously."

\---

Jonny feels far less tense and wound-up after he's finally put on some clothes and had some time to let Patrick's clear, unambiguous pronouncement sink in. He finds it in himself to smile, even, while they wait for the cab – the team bus long gone on ahead without them – and apologises for the little time they have in Buffalo.

"I'd love to take you all out – or have you guys take me out to your favourite places, whatever – but we're flying down to New York tonight, so – "

"It's fine, it's fine," Donna says. "You'll come back again, anyway. Right?"

They don’t play the Sabres in Buffalo any more this season. Donna has to know that, so the unspoken 'with Patrick?' hangs in the air.

"Yeah, of course," Jonny finds himself saying.

Donna and Pat senior actually beam at him – full-on, dazzling beaming – and the youngest girl, Jacqueline? Patrick had told him earlier, in the locker room, but he can't keep the three girls' names straight – gives him an abrupt, unexpected hug.

"Thank you," she says, so soft that Jonny has to strain his ears to hear. "Thank you for letting us see Pat again."

Jonny pats her awkwardly on the shoulder, and Erica pulls her away.

"Yes, thank you," Donna says; and then she sobs, and before Jonny knows it, the _entire_ family's crying and launching themselves at Patrick, swallowing him in hugs.

"What if we have to wait six more years to see you again?" one of the girls asks tearfully.

"Not six years, no," Patrick says – he's sounding wobbly, too, and when he glances at Jonny, Jonny can see tear tracks glistening on his cheeks. Which, of course: Patrick sniffles and tears up at sad soap operas, no way in hell would he not cry when his family's surrounding him, all in varying degrees of tears. "Right, Jonny?"

"Definitely not six years," Jonny agrees, and even as he says it, he realizes that he means it. He wants Patrick to be able to see his family, at least in the offseason; he wants to bring Patrick back to Winnipeg too, show him around Saint Boniface; and then he idly thinks about whether Patrick would like it if Jonny took him on a vacation in the offseason. Maybe to Italy; Jonny's always wanted to go there.

When the cab pulls up, it takes some effort to pry the girls and Donna off Patrick; but they let go eventually, the girls clinging on to Patrick's hands and the very tips of his fingers until they're actually in the cab, Pat senior hugging his son tight, Donna kissing him on both cheeks and smoothing her hands over his face. She's the last to get into the cab, and when she finally lets go of Patrick, she turns to give Jonny a hug as well, and a kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you," she says again. "You're so good to him."

Then they're in the cab, and they're pulling away, and Jonny lets Patrick stare after the rapidly-diminishing silhouette of the car for a few seconds before putting his arm around him. Patrick's shoulders are shaking with sobs, but he curls himself into Jonny's side as if instinctively seeking out Jonny's warmth and comfort.

Jonny holds him like that until their own cab comes, and then he bundles Patrick into it and asks the driver to take them to their hotel as quickly as he can.

In their room, Jonny carefully strips Patrick while Patrick sits on the edge of the bed, face red and blotchy and eyes still wet. He kneels to peel off Patrick's socks, but Patrick leans forward when Jonny picks up his foot by the ankle, and rests his cheek against the top of Jonny's head.

"You know that I won't leave you, right?" he says, voice cracked from crying. "I love them, but I'm bound to you. I'm not about to go running off."

"I thought you might," Jonny confesses. He keeps his eyes down, tugging the sock off.

"I know you did, I could tell," Patrick says.

"You're not – I felt like I was keeping you from them. Like I was confining you against your will, and you had to stay with me out of obligation."

"Listen, Jonny – if I'd felt that I wanted to stay with you only because I was _obliged_ to, because I had a bondage agreement with you – I'd have run away, long ago. Especially when you're away on the road so much. I'd have begged my parents to hide me somehow, when I saw them today, if I really wanted to leave."

"But – you didn’t. You didn't _want_ to go," Jonny asks. "You said you wanted to come back with me."

"Yeah," Patrick says with a watery chuckle. "Glad that you finally got it."

\---

Jonny tries not to drink too much during the season, unless it's warranted by something really good, but when Marko comes up to him after practice and invites him to his home a couple of days later for his birthday, he's hard-pressed to say no. Marko's been doing brilliantly on his line, and he hero worships Jonny with the same sort of fervour Saader had as a rookie. It's been a while since Jonny had a rookie look up to him like that, and he's been thinking the team needs a good party to unwind after their successful 5-1-0 road trip, so when Marko busts out the pleading eyes and goes, "Please, Jonny? Almost everyone else will be there", Jonny says yes.

"You can bring Patrick too," Marko says.

This, too, is common – at team parties, the guys like to bring their pleasure slaves along, share them around, have some fun - but Jonny never has, because he just has zero intention to share Patrick ever.

Marko likes Patrick, though; and when he tells Jonny he doesn’t have to let Patrick do whatever he doesn’t want – "come on, Jonny, I'm not that kind of asshole" – Jonny nods.

"Sure," he says.

\---

The party's pretty normal, as all Blackhawks parties go. There's catered food, and a neverending supply of alcohol, and an enormous cake, half of which gets smashed into Marko's face; and most of the team are completely sloshed by the time Shawsy eggs Marko into using his pleasure slave. She's splayed naked on the rug like a birthday present – which Jonny supposes she, well, _is_ – skin pale against the heather grey of the material.

"Jesus, Marko, stop pussying around," Crow calls when Marko demurs. "Can't get it up? Whiskey dick?"

That gets Marko going. "I'll show you whiskey dick, asshole," he slurs, and pushes his jeans down over his hips.

The guys start cheering, really whooping, when Marko gets to his knees between the girl's spread thighs and licks a long, wet stripe in the crease of her cunt, from bottom to top.

Jonny rolls his eyes. Marko hasn't even done anything and the guys are already acting like it's the best porn they've ever seen.

Marko eats her out until she's gasping and grabbing at his hair, and then he picks up the condom Shawsy had flung at him and rolls it on unsteadily. He's still got his shirt on, and it flaps down loosely when he leans over her and fucks in.

The guys holler, Shawsy loudest of all, when the girl moans out loud and hooks her slender legs around his waist, pulling him in as close as he can go.

There's too much noise for Jonny to hear much – he can't hear the telltale slap of skin or the squish of fluids, but his attention's diverted by Panarin's pleasure slave dropping to his knees as Panarin and Artem unzip their pants in a smooth, simultaneous motion, and then the slave's leaning forward, sucking at the head of Artem's dick, curling his hand around Panarin's.

Most of the guys have kicked off their pants by now, and are jacking themselves, slowly and leisurely, to the sight of Marko fucking Shawsy's pleasure slave hard enough for her to make breathy little "uh, uh, uh" noises with each thrust in, or Artemi's slave sucking two cocks into his mouth.

Drunk or not, Marko's performing admirably; he's even got the presence of mind to reach down and thumb her clit while he thrusts into her. Jonny's pretty impressed. The girl cries out and arches her back, and Jonny can see the moment Marko comes, because his arms buckle and he almost falls completely on top of her before managing to lock one arm in time.

The girl's breathing hard, skin gleaming with sweat, the lips of her pussy pink and swollen when Marko withdraws. He rips off his condom and tosses it blindly aside – Jonny winces at the mess – before he drops to the rug next to her, rolls onto his side, and passes right out.

"Fuckin' loser," Shawsy says gleefully. "Hoss, you want next?"

Hoss gets into the space Marko was, only he grabs her by the backs of her knees and pushes, so she's spread wide for him. Hammer kneels by her head and turns it with a touch of his hand to her chin, so her lips are pressed against the tip of his cock. Jonny sees it for just a flicker of a second before the girl sucks it in, eyes falling shut.

Artemi's got his slave on all fours now, Artem fucking his mouth, Crow fucking him from behind. Artemi's just watching, jerking off lazily, and when he comes, he aims his cock so his come splashes on the cheek of his slave, drips down his cheekbone and onto Artem's dick and the corner of his lips. It's pretty fucking hot.

There's no hollering or cheering now; everyone's silent apart from the sounds of gasps and moans and the slick slap of skin. Someone's produced a tube of lube from somewhere, and the guys waiting for their turns are stroking themselves, the squelch of their hands loudly audible.

Jonny suddenly realizes Patrick hasn’t said a single word or made a sound since Marko had started, and he twists his head round. Patrick hasn’t moved from his space next to Jonny on the couch, but his eyes are trained on the guy being fucked, come streaked over his face, occasionally flicking to the girl. There's a hitch in his breath that Jonny recognizes, and a dull red flush is spreading over the planes of his face. When Jonny looks down, Patrick's hands are clenched into fists in his lap, knuckles white.

Jonny has a flash of something – the form Patrick had filled out, that Jonny had read just once and put away – and makes an executive decision.

Patrick doesn’t resist when Jonny reaches out and tugs him into his lap, arranging him so his back's pressed to Jonny's chest. Jonny wraps an arm around his chest and lets his other hand drop onto Patrick's thigh, slides it up till the heel of his palm is pressed against the hard, confined jut of Patrick's cock in his jeans.

"You like watching?" he whispers, hooking his chin over Patrick's shoulder, following his gaze to where Artem's moved away from Panarin's boy, Desi taking his place and fucking into his mouth without preamble.

Patrick doesn't react, but his lashes flutter rapidly, as if he's unsure of his reply.

"You want to join in? Let them use you?" Jonny asks.

As if he's heard him, Duncs lifts his head from where he's taken the space Crow vacated, gloved cock in his hand as he fits it at the guy's hole. "Jonny!" he shouts. "Maybe your p. slave wants to have a go!"

Patrick turns towards Jonny then, eyes wide and pleading _no, no_ ; but Jonny knows him well enough now, he knows all Patrick's tells, and he can feel the insistent stiffness of Patrick's cock under his palm.

"No," Jonny says calmly, rubbing the ball of his palm in slow circles over Patrick's cock. "He prefers watching."

Duncs just shrugs, and goes on his way.

"I know it's not really the watching you want, though," Jonny says, soft, his lips brushing the shell of Patrick's ear. "I know you want to be laid out there, for them to use, isn’t it?"

Even through the thickness of the denim, Jonny can feel it when Patrick's cock grows impossibly harder.

"Yeah," Jonny whispers, pressing a kiss to the hinge of Patrick's jaw, below his ear. "I know you'll like that. You love cock so much, you keep begging for more even when I'm already so deep inside you, Pat. You'll only be satisfied with being used over and over by all the cocks that want to use you, right?"

Patrick shudders in his arms, but his hips push up, pressing his cock harder into Jonny's hand. Jonny grins, and unzips Patrick's jeans, slipping two fingers in; there's already a warm, wet spot on the front of Patrick's boxers that he can feel. He rubs against it for a few seconds, watching as Patrick's mouth drops open and his breaths grow stuttery, and then brings his fingers up to his own mouth, sucking first one in and then the other, licking the taste of Patrick off them.

"Yeah," Jonny says, sliding his spit slick fingers along the curve of Patrick's cheek. "Maybe I should let them all taste you, have a go. You like that?"

Patrick turns his face away, but Jonny grabs his jaw, tilts it back so Patrick's forced to look right at him. "You want that?" he asks. "I'd make you go on all fours, like Artemi's boy, because you look so good like that, and I know you like being fucked hard from behind. I'd leave you there, and any of my boys – _any one of them_ – could fuck your ass or your mouth or your hands as they wished."

Patrick's eyes squeeze shut at that, and he lets out a wrecked little sound, like a sob. His lips are red and parted and so fucking enticing, and Jonny just has to kiss him. He rubs his hand over Patrick's cock again as he does it, through the layer of fabric, and Patrick makes a frustrated noise into his mouth.

"So good, Patrick," Jonny whispers. "'You're such a good boy, I could just get you to bend over this couch right now. Spread your legs wide and keep your head down and present your pretty ass, so all the guys here could use you, make you crazy on cock."

Patrick whimpers, arching his back. Jonny's getting hard now, too, Patrick's ass grinding against his crotch, and he lifts his hips a little, makes sure Patrick feels it.

"Tell me if you want it," Jonny says. "Tell me if I can put you face down, right now, and invite all the guys to fuck you as they pleased. They might not be nice like me either, Pat – they'd be rough, they'd fuck your hole like it didn't matter to them how sloppy and loose you'd get at the end of it. But you'd want that – you'd let me do it, wouldn't you?"

It's a long stretch of seconds before Patrick finally answers; and his voice is trembly, rough. "Yes," he says. "Yes, you – you could. You could order me."

Jonny's about to kiss him again, when he adds, "But I don't – Jonny, please, I can't. it's too much."

Jonny hesitates for a moment, looking Patrick over. His eyes are still shut, but his cock's hard and insistent, pressing against his jeans. He's hitching his hips into the slow rub of Jonny's hand, and his lips are so red and wet he looks like he's almost drooling.

In short: nothing about him tells Jonny that is too much for him to handle.

"If I want you to do it, you'll do it," Jonny says, voice low. Patrick's head lolls back on Jonny's shoulder as he takes a great, shuddery inhale of breath, and Jonny licks up the straining tendon in his neck, just to see Patrick's mouth fall open.

"You know you will," he continues. "Because I bought you, Patrick, I _own_ you, and I could make you spread your legs over my lap now and slide my cock in you, keep your hole open so if someone else wants to come up and fuck you they could. They'd fuck their cock in next to mine, stretch you so wide you can't even _think_ , Patrick. And I'd let them, I'd tell them to use you as hard as they want, take turns on you until you're wet and leaking with so much come, you can't move without dripping."

He bites at the hinge of Patrick's jaw, just below his ear, and Patrick's hips jerk into Jonny's hand.

"You'd let me do it if I wanted," Jonny says. "You'd let me order you to let yourself be used, be passed around like a cheap cockwhore, so fucking greedy for cock you can't say no."

Patrick's hands scrabble to find Jonny – his right hand lands on the one Jonny has palming insistent circles over his cock, and he presses down hard, increasing the pressure. His other hand reaches behind him to twist into Jonny's hair and grip it, pulling Jonny's mouth closer to the soft, vulnerable skin of his neck.

"Say it," Jonny whispers. "Say you want it." And he slides a finger through the slit in Patrick's boxers, swipes it over the wet, swollen head of his dick.

Patrick makes a choked-out moan, and tilts his head blindly towards Jonny, searching for his mouth; Jonny can see a glistening tear at the corner of one of his eyes.

"I want it," Patrick says, finally, his voice a mere rasp. "I want you to fuck me – I want you to pass me around, let the team use me. Jonny, please – I can't – "

He's already incoherent, mouth open and wet, the single tear making its way down over the sharp planes of his cheek.

"I'm gonna fuck you," Jonny says. He's fully hard now, his cock pushing insistently against his jeans and Patrick's.

Patrick just nods, head lolling, like his neck's too limp to hold it up properly.

Artemi's slave is getting fucked by Seabs now – Seabs is really pounding into him, his glutes flexing, and the slave's got his cheek pressed to the carpet, gasping into it. Jonny takes Patrick by the chin, shakes a little until Patrick's eyes flicker open, red and teary and unfocused.

"Look at him," Jonny orders, and turns Patrick's face towards the slave, watching as Patrick's eyes grow wide. "Look at him taking it and loving it. I'm gonna fuck you like that, and you're gonna love it."

With impeccable timing, Seabs withdraws just then – Jonny can see the red, stretched rim of the guy's rim as he pulls out, and Tikhonov takes his place, shoving his cock in like he meets no resistance. The force of his thrust pushes the slave further along the carpet, and Jonny imagines how red the skin on his forearms must be from carpet burn.

Patrick whimpers next to him, hands clutching at Jonny's arms, turning his red face away from the sight of Artemi's slave sucking and fucking.

No one pays them any attention when he lifts Patrick off his lap, takes him by the wrist, and tugs him into a bathroom just off the living room.

Patrick doesn’t say anything when Jonny slams him against the cold wall next to the doorjamb, but when Jonny unbuttons his jeans and starts working them down over his hips, he grabs Jonny's wrist.

"Jonny – please, the door," Patrick says, and tips his chin at where Jonny's left the door wide open when he dragged Patrick in.

"What about it?" Jonny says, twisting free of Patrick's hold and pulling his jeans down until they pool at his ankles.

"It's open," Patrick whispers.

"I know that," Jonny says, and yanks Patrick's boxers down, over the full swell of his ass.

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut again; his hands are already on the wall, bracing him, and they open and close, as if he's looking for something to grab. "People will – they'll see."

"Yeah," Jonny says. "Anyone walking nearby will see what a slut you are, taking my cock."

In truth – Jonny's pretty sure everyone's far too occupied to come looking for them. The way the door's tilted open, they can both look out into the living room and watch as the guys take turns on the slaves, hear the noises of sex going on; and that's really what Jonny wants, to let Patrick see and hear.

Patrick shudders, thighs twisting together like he's simultaneously too embarrassed to spread his legs, and so turned on he's aching for touch. "Jonny," he says, "please – "

"If you want me to fuck you, you'll have to tell me," Jonny says.

Patrick lets his head droop low between his shoulders, lets his palms go flat against the wall as he pushes his ass out. It's subtle, but Jonny notices it anyway. "Please fuck me, Jonny," he says, in a voice so small Jonny wouldn't have heard if he wasn't listening for it.

"A little louder, babe," he encourages. He turns towards the bathroom counter, runs his gaze over the various bottles and implements on it until he sees a tube of moisturizer, and steps away from Patrick only long enough to snag it. When he steps back, he puts a hand on Patrick's ass, stroking over the soft skin, his thumb dipping just slightly into the crack.

"Please, I want you to fuck me, Jonny," Patrick says.

"Here, yeah?" Jonny says. He unzips his jeans, moaning a little as the pressure on his cock eases, and tugs it through the opening. "You want me to fuck you here, let anyone see?"

"Yes," Patrick says. His voice is louder now, clearer, like he's dropped into the headspace where he's so desperate for Jonny's cock he doesn't give a damn about anything else. "Yes, here, now – Jonny, please, get your cock in me."

Jonny doesn't waste any time – he squeezes a good-sized dollop of the moisturizer into the palm of his hand and slicks it over his cock, getting it good and slippery, before slipping a wet finger into Patrick. They'd fucked earlier in the afternoon, so Patrick's still a little loose, not completely tightened yet, but his breath still hitches as Jonny works the moisturizer inside him.

There's an abrupt burst of laughter from outside – some of the guys saying something that Jonny can't catch – but it makes Patrick squeeze around his finger, tight and warm.

Jonny lubes him up as quickly and efficiently as he can, and then, on another wave of laughter from the guys, he lines his cock up, and shoves in hard.

The sound escaping Patrick sounds like it's been punched out of him, but he's pushing himself backwards to meet Jonny's thrusts, so Jonny just grips his hips, thumbs pressing into his dimples of Venus, and fucks up into him.

Patrick's flexing his fingers against the wall, folding his hands into fists and opening them again as Jonny fucks into his hot, wet warmth. He's clenching down tight, his ass tightening against Jonny's thighs, and it's so good it's going to be over way too soon for Jonny. He plants his feet and bends over to place his hand over Patrick's, lacing their fingers together, and mouth along the knobs of vertebrae between Patrick's thick, bunching shoulders.

"Fuck, you feel good," he says into Patrick's soft skin. "Wonder if you'll still feel this good when you've been passed around and fucked for hours, if you'll still be this tight, or if you'll be loose and slippery like silk, from all the come filling you."

Patrick lets out a low sob, almost immediately followed by a moan which he tries to stifle by turning his head and biting into his wrist. And Jonny really can’t have that – he wants to hear exactly what he's doing to Patrick – so he unlaces their fingers, grabs Patrick's damp curls, and tugs his mouth away.

"No," he says. "I want them to hear you. Hear how hot you are for my cock, how much you'll want more cock – "

He angles his hips up, and on his next thrust in he grinds his cock unerringly into Patrick's prostate.

Patrick groans, like he can't help it, and truth be told, he can't; he's never been quiet in bed, not since Jonny bought him. Now, though, now he's trying so hard to keep silent he's biting into his lower lip hard enough that he's leaving white indentations in the flesh, and there are tears leaking from the corners of his tightly shut eyes.

Jonny lets go of Patrick's hair, but when his head begins to droop forward again, Jonny curves a hand around his throat, gentle but with enough pressure to make Patrick lift his head, until he's upright and his back's pressed to Jonny's chest, his head falling back on Jonny's shoulder.

"C'mon, Pat," Jonny says, licking over his earlobe. "Open your eyes."

He has to wait several seconds, but Patrick does, blinking them open. They're shimmery from tears, but his pupils are blown black, almost no blue in them at all. Jonny nudges his head to the side, to where he can see a sliver of what's going on outside, Shawsy's slave now on her back and legs open while Shawsy himself ruts between them, her face and breasts streaked with come. Someone's hand – Jonny can't see who – swipes over the come on her peaked, stiff nipple, and lets her suck it off his fingers.

Jonny slides his fingers into Patrick's mouth at that same moment, and Patrick moans around them and immediately sucks, tongue flicking between his knuckles.

"Yeah, that's it," Jonny says. "You're imagining that's a cock, aren't you? My cock in your ass, another cock in your mouth, you're gagging for it so hard. Suck it, babe, come on, make that cock feel good."

The tears are rolling down Patrick's cheeks now, but he sucks obediently, his cheeks hollowing around Jonny's fingers. He's tightening at the same time, squeezing down on Jonny's cock, and when Jonny reaches down with his other hand he finds that Patrick's dripping so much precome, his cock's slick with it. He rubs his thumb over the head of Patrick's cock, gasping when Patrick clenches tighter in response.

"Yeah, you're doing so good, taking all these cocks," Jonny says. "Gonna come in you Patrick – make you nice and wet for the next guy, and the next, and the next. You want that?"

Patrick chokes around his fingers, but he nods, eyes still fixed on the tableau outside.

"Yeah, I know, you love getting stuffed full, getting _used_ ," Jonny says. The pleasure's coiling in his balls now, drawing them up stiff; he's not going to last.

Patrick's practically limp in his arms now, making Jonny take most of his weight, letting gravity drag him down on Jonny's cock. Jonny pauses to readjust him, and then fucks back in at the angle he knows will get his cock just right inside Patrick, and sure enough, Patrick moans and squirms, trying to get him deeper. His cock, when Jonny looks down at it, is drooling sticky trails of precome.

"When we get home," Jonny says, "I'm going to buy you a dildo. One that I can suction cup to the wall, so I can watch you get on your hands and knees on the carpet and fuck yourself on it while I fuck your mouth, so hot and desperate for it. I'll get my cock inside you, and force the dildo alongside, make you stretch for two cocks. Make you crazy, make you come on two cocks stuffed inside your tight little ass."

Patrick sobs, and then he's sucking Jonny's fingers frantically, so hard Jonny can feel his teeth, as Jonny holds him tight and fucks thick, strong spurts of come out of him, watching as they spurt up his abs and drip on his cock and down to the floor.

He's still coming in thin dribbles, pushed out of him with every press of Jonny's cock on his prostate, when Jonny falls over the edge, groaning into the air as he grinds his orgasm out into Patrick's ass.

Patrick slumps against him when he's done, legs trembling, and when he looks up at Jonny he's red and blotchy, but he kisses Jonny like he's starving. Jonny kisses back, gentles him with long, slow strokes of his hands up and down over Patrick's chest and stomach, pecks at his cheeks until Patrick stops shaking.

He's dressing Patrick back in his jeans when Pat grabs his hand, stilling it where it's buttoning him up. "Don't – " he says, and his voice is a raspy crack. He clears his throat, and then says, firmer, "Don't take me out there."

Jonny's confused for a moment before it twigs – Patrick's too embarrassed to go back out and watch again. Too embarrassed, or too worn out, or both – but whatever, Jonny's given him what he wants, and he doesn't need to ask Patrick for more, now.

"I'm taking you home," he says, and pulls Patrick's zipper up.

No one seems to notice when they leave – too caught up in whatever's happening – but Patrick's silent all the way home in the car. When they're home and showered and in bed, but Patrick still hasn’t said a word, Jonny starts to worry.

"Hey," he says into the darkness of their bedroom, and feels Patrick shift where he's cuddled against Jonny's chest. "Are you okay?"

"Mm-hmm," Patrick says, so soft Jonny barely hears it.

"Was that… too much? Earlier?" Jonny asks, hesitantly.

There's a long silence – so long that Jonny's already gearing up to apologise, even though he knows he doesn’t _have_ to – but then Patrick says, "Not really. But it was – intense."

"But you – "

"I liked it," Patrick whispers.

"Did you really?" Jonny asks. "You don't have to – lie to me, or whatever – I'm not going to punish you. We tried something, it didn't work for you, that's fine."

"It worked for me," Patrick insists. "I'm not lying."

Jonny frowns, even though Patrick can't see him. "You seem so – out of it."

"Because it was _good_ ," Patrick says. "I liked it – I mean. It's not something I'd really do in real life, but when you were talking to me about it – I liked it. I could imagine, but I was still safe. With you."

"Oh," Jonny says. He's a little stunned. _Safe_ is probably the last word he'd use to describe whatever Patrick was possibly feeling.

"It was good," Patrick repeats, more firmly this time. "You did good, Jonny."

Jonny feels like this is something he should be saying to Patrick instead, so he says, "You did good too. So good."

Patrick finds his lips in the dark, and they're kissing lazily, slowly, when Patrick says, "I – your fingers, please?"

This isn't something Patrick asks for often, having Jonny's fingers in him as he sleeps, but sometimes he wants it, especially when he's keyed up after sex that leaves him still a little turned on. It took them a while to find an angle that doesn't fuck with Jonny's wrist and can still keep them tangled up together, skin to skin, but it's easy now to roll Patrick over so he's half-sprawled over Jonny's chest, his leg pulled up and slung over Jonny's waist, while Jonny lets Patrick suck on his fingers a little to get them wet.

He reaches down, over the curve of Patrick's thigh and ass, and parts his cheeks with his last two fingers while he wriggles his index and middle fingers into Patrick, still soft and wet inside.

It doesn't take much – Jonny generally can't get his fingers all the way in at this angle, but he can go almost two knuckles deep, and Patrick sighs, a soft exhale of air against the skin of Jonny's chest.

"Yeah," Patrick says, words already running together as he starts drifting into sleep. "That's perfect. I, Jonny, I – "

"You?" Jonny asks, but Pat's already asleep, his breaths deep and even and tickling Jonny when he breathes out.

\---

In Arizona, Jonny's stripping off his pads and gear in preparation for his post-game with the beats, when he snags his phone from his gear bag and turns it on to see a message blinking from Patrick.

 _Your goal got me so fucking hot I just had to,_ it says, and it's accompanied by a truly obscene photograph of Patrick's naked body from the neck down, his nipples pink and stiff, abs taut, cock softening against his hip, and come splattered across his torso.

Jesus Christ. Jonny fumbles with his phone and nearly drops it; he shoves it back into his bag with so much force, Hoss is side-eyeing him from the next stall.

"You okay?" Hoss asks, as the beats begin streaming into the room.

"Yeah," Jonny says, and he's relieved his voice sounds normal. "Just slipped in my grip."

That little asshole. Jonny’s going to kill him when he gets back to the hotel.

\---

Only when he’s safely alone back in his room does Jonny take his phone out again. There are three messages from Patrick – the one that had got Jonny stupidly flustered earlier, and another two pictures he sent before that last one.

There’s a photo of Patrick’s hand, strong wide fingers wrapped around his cock, and his thumb pressed against the underside of the crown, almost as if he’s holding his cock up for Jonny’s inspection and approval. Jonny can just make out a shiny, pearly bead of precome at the slit of Patrick’s cockhead. And the other photo shows, quite clearly, the tip of one of the dildos Jonny bought Patrick disappearing into the slick, stretched rim of Patrick’s hole. Patrick’s even made sure to angle the camera in such a way that his body and face are captured in the frame, and it’s a sight – each muscle in his abdomen clearly defined, his mouth open and wet and red and eyes half-closed.

The first picture’s captioned _thinking about you_ and the second one says _i wish you were here, i want you to fuck me so hard._

Jonny’s cock is swelling in his pants just from looking at Patrick, and he fumbles to shoot a message out to Patrick one-handed as he tugs at his belt: _You’re a fucking asshole. Get on Skype right now._

He’s barely got his clothes off and his laptop open when a Skype notification pings, informing him that Patrick’s calling.

“You’re an asshole,” Jonny says again, once he answers the call and Patrick’s grinning face flickers into life on his screen.

“You should be thanking me for that,” Patrick says.

“What if I’d opened your messages with people around and the guys had seen what you sent me?” Jonny asks; but he’s already feeling the corners of his mouth turning up, like it’s completely beyond his control, his usual reaction to Patrick’s wide smile.

“Then they’d just see exactly what you do to me,” Patrick says; and just like that, his voice drops a pitch lower, his vowels drawn out, sensual and easy.

“Fuck,” Jonny says. “You’re so – “

“Are you naked already?” Patrick interrupts. “Because I am.” He tilts the screen of his laptop up a little and pushes it away from him, enough for Jonny to see that he’s leaning against the headboard of their bed, legs spread and laptop between his knees. He is, as he says, completely naked, skin pale and pink, cock swollen. As Jonny watches, Patrick reaches down to rub his thumb over the head of it before he lifts it to his mouth and licks.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jonny says. “Yes, I am, you fucker.” He gets his fingers around his own cock, already heavy with arousal, and gives it just one stroke from base to tip.

“Show me,” Patrick demands.

Jonny shoves the chair away from the laptop and leans back, holding his cock so Patrick can’t miss the way it looks in his fist, the slick red head rising from the tunnel of his fingers.

“Yeah,” says Patrick, tongue sliding over his plush lower lip. “God, Jonny. You know how bad I want that?”

“You’re not wasting any time, are you,” Jonny says, only half-jokingly, beginning a slow stroke up and down over his cock. “You already came earlier, you dick.”

It’s gratifying to see the way Patrick’s eyes drop to the leisurely rhythm he’s got going on his cock and stay there like they’ve been glued to the screen. His mouth is open as well, and he’s licking his lips every few seconds.

“I can come more than once,” Patrick says breathlessly, and he’s jerking himself off too as he watches Jonny, matching Jonny’s pace stroke for stroke. “Yeah, god, Jonny – shit, you look good – “

Jonny tightens his abs and widens his thighs as much as the arms of the chair will let him, giving Patrick a good look. He’s doing nothing more than jacking his cock, but Patrick actually sighs and leans forward in the bed to get closer to the screen.

“I wish – fuck, want you home, Jonny. Want your cock.”

“Shit, Pat. Tell me what you’d do if I was home with you now.”

“I – fuck, I like it when you put your mouth here.” Patrick lets his free hand drop to his chest, the tip of his middle finger running over a nipple. Jonny can practically see the sharp inhale Patrick takes; his nipples have always been sensitive. “So hot, and wet, and sometimes when you use a little teeth, it feels – so fucking _good_ \- “

Patrick gasps the last word out, and Jonny’s cock jerks in his palm when Patrick twists his nipple between his fingers and makes the filthiest little sound, back arching into it.

“Yeah, know you like that,” Jonny says. His voice has gone rough; he stops jerking and squeezes his cock tight, thumb gently stroking over his frenulum. He lets himself shut his eyes and imagine it for a moment: sucking Patrick’s stiff nipple into his mouth, licking over the tight little nub, teasing it while Patrick writhes under him; and then he opens his eyes, because there’s no way in hell he’s going to miss this. “Fuck, I wanna, Pat. Wanna suck on your tits so bad.”

The word slips out of him unbidden – and he pauses, horrified for a moment, because shit, he hadn’t meant to say that, what the hell – but Patrick moans, louder than before, and pinches his nipple again, harder.

Huh. Interesting.

Jonny tries again. “You want me to do what I always do, babe? Stick my fingers in you while I suck and bite at your little tits?”

Patrick actually _sobs_ , and nods frantically, saying “yes, yes”, in a voice so wrecked Jonny can hardly hear him. He’s still pumping his cock, lifting his hips into it and twisting his nipple, and Patrick’s nipples are sensitive enough that he’ll come with enough play on them, which – not yet, Jonny thinks.

“Stop,” he says.

Patrick continues, lost in the pleasure; and Jonny repeats it, louder and firmer, in what Patrick likes to call his captain voice, when he needs a noisy room to snap to attention. “Stop, Patrick.”

And Patrick does immediately, lifting both hands off his body and dropping them to his sides. His cock is thick and dark, dripping with glistening trails of precome onto his stomach, and the nipple he was playing with is a beautifully dark shade of pink.

It’s a fucking glorious picture, and Jonny wishes he was there, so he could wreck Patrick with more than just his words - but, he thinks, while all he has are his words, he’s damn well going to _ruin_ Patrick.

“Hands and knees, Pat,” he orders. “Show me your pussy.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Patrick moans, and Jonny watches in fascination as his dick twitches and drools another gleaming stream of precome.

“You like this,” he can’t help saying, a little awed. “You like it, me saying this stuff to you.”

“I – fuck, Jonny, of course I do, I like anything you do,” Patrick chokes. He’s flushed down to his chest, and Jonny wants so desperately to reach into the fucking screen, get his hands on Patrick’s skin.

But he can’t, so he settles for saying, “Show me then. Turn around and show me that pussy of yours.”

Patrick shudders, and then – slowly, like he’s trying to give Jonny a good show – rolls onto his stomach, and lifts himself on his hands and knees, spreading his legs wide so Jonny can see his tight, pink hole, still glistening from where Patrick had fucked himself with the dildo earlier.

“Oh, yeah,” Jonny breathes. He’s so hard it almost hurts, and he starts stroking his cock again, feeling the hot weight of it in his hand. “Fuck, that’s so pretty, Patrick. You’ve got such a pretty pussy.”

Patrick sobs again, fainter this time now that he’s facing away from the laptop, but then he turns his head to look over his shoulder at Jonny. His eyes are blown black, and his lips are red from how he’s been licking and biting at them. He’s fucking gorgeous, Jonny thinks.

“Are you still wet?” he asks. He can feel his breathing coming faster now, at the sight of Patrick spreading himself so beautifully for him onscreen, at the thought of going home and sinking himself balls-deep in Patrick’s perfect, tight ass. “Get your fingers wet, if you’re not.”

“Yeah, I am,” Patrick says, but he sucks his fingers into his mouth anyway, still looking at Jonny, and making sure Jonny can see his tongue sliding between his knuckles.

“If I was there,” Jonny says, low, “I’d fuck your mouth a little first. I know how much you like having something in your mouth, right?”

Patrick nods.

“And then when you got my cock good and wet,” Jonny continues, “I’d fuck your cunt next, the way you like it. Pin you down and hold your wrists against the bed so you can’t move, just keep your hips up for me to fuck into. You like that – being held down and used, letting me fuck you until your pussy’s dripping with my come, yeah?”

The sound that Patrick makes is muffled around his fingers, but his entire body ripples in a shudder.

“You can finger your cunt now, Patrick,” Jonny says. He’s mildly amazed, in a corner of his mind, by how calm he sounds. “C’mon, show me how you want my cock in your slutty pussy.”

Patrick whimpers, but he obediently takes his fingers out of his mouth and reaches between his legs, sliding three into himself at one go. Jonny watches as they go in smooth and easy, sinking in to the third knuckle without resistance, Patrick’s hole stretching around them and swallowing them up. They’re barely all the way in when Patrick drags them out again, fanning them apart as he does so Jonny can see his slick, open hole.

It makes him groan, the burn of pleasure ratcheting up in his belly. “Fuck. I want to fuck you so bad, Patrick. Fucking ruin that gorgeous little cunt. Show me, come on.”

Patrick shoves his fingers back in with a gasp, and then keeps fucking himself, almost wild. Jonny can see the exact moment he hits his prostate because his other arm buckles and he drops his torso to the bed, panting and moaning and pushing back into his fingers. His cock is bobbing between his spread thighs, and when he twists his fingers just so and drives them deeper into him, grinding them inside himself, his cock begins to dribble a thick, white trail of come, hanging in a thread from the head of his cock and lengthening until it splashes on the bed.

“Oh shit, Pat, that’s fucking hot,” Jonny says. He’s fucking up into his fist now, in tandem with Patrick fingering himself onscreen; tightening his glutes and lifting up like he’s fucking into Patrick. “Make yourself come, go on – wanna watch how your pussy clenches, fucking greedy for my cock.”

Patrick sobs, once, shoves his fingers in as deep as they can go and hooks the tip of his thumb into the rim, and that’s it – he almost yells as he comes, cock jerking and spurting untouched while thick ropes of come splatter onto the bed. Jonny can see Patrick’s hole spasming around his fingers, and that – along with Patrick’s loud, choked moans of his name, like he can’t control his voice – is what tips him over the edge.

His orgasm hits him like a tidal wave, crashing over him; he tightens his fist around his cock and gasps through the intense pleasure, white-hot heat behind his closed eyelids.

When he opens his eyes, Patrick’s still facing away from the laptop, slumped facedown into the bed, so all Jonny can see of his head is his mop of blond curls.

“Pat?” he calls, his voice rough.

Patrick stirs only enough to turn his face to the side so Jonny can just make out the curve of his cheek over his shoulder, and cracks one eye open. “Wassat?” he mumbles, and Jonny can’t help but feel a little smug.

“Get up, babe,” he says. “You gotta clean up. You’re lying in the wet spot.”

Patrick groans and rolls over, to the clean side of the bed, and flings an arm over his face. “Don’t care,” he says. “Don’t wanna move.”

Jonny allows himself a couple of seconds to admire the shiny patchwork Patrick’s come has left on his abdomen, and then says, “At least shut the laptop down.”

“Ugh,” Patrick says. He lifts his arm up, enough to peek down at Jonny through the screen. His eyes are already unfocused. “I can’t even sit up. How do you manage to do this to me every time?”

Jonny grins, sharp. “Come on. Shut it down and then you can go to bed. And when I get home, I promise you, I’m going to get my tongue in there and eat your pussy out until you’re begging me to stop, and then I’m going to fuck you for _hours_.”

“Jesus,” Patrick says faintly. He struggles upright, wobbly, and glares down at the laptop. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I don’t,” Jonny shrugs.

“Fine,” Patrick says. “Make sure you do exactly that, then.” He purses his lips and blows Jonny a mock kiss, then Jonny sees his hand reach out towards the laptop before the screen’s pushed down and it goes black.

Jonny looks down at his own hand, covered in come, and heaves himself out of the chair with a sigh to shower. It’s another three days before he gets to go back to Chicago.


	3. Chapter 3

When Jonny skates up to receive the Cup, he’s trembling in a way he didn’t the first time. But this _is_ the first time the Blackhawks have won the cup on home ice in nearly sixty years, and Jonny supposes the roar of the crowd in the arena is what’s making the flesh of his arms ripple in goosebumps, as he lifts the Cup above his head and yells.

The noise of the crowd, resplendent in Hawks red, increases to an earsplitting volume when Jonny skates a lap around the arena. The players’ families are already crowded at the benches, waiting to be let on the ice, and as Jonny skates past he catches a glimpse of his mother, who appears to be holding Patrick’s hand, and Patrick’s face, cheeks red from excitement.

He hands the Cup off to Artem – because Artem _deserves_ it, solidly centering the second line all season, dragging them through the first round of playoffs with three game winning goals – and heads straight for where his parents and Patrick are.

The families can’t go on the ice yet, but his mother leans over the bench to hug and kiss him, then David, then his father – and Patrick’s last, but when Jonny bundles him into his arms, he can feel Patrick shaking.

He rubs his hands up and down Patrick’s arms, snug in their Toews jersey. “You okay?” he whispers.

“Yeah, I’m just – fuck,” Patrick says. He lifts his face from Jonny’s chest. “Fuck. You did it, Jonny. You _won the Stanley Cup_.”

“For the second time,” Jonny adds, not at all modestly.

Patrick laughs, then, and he just – he looks glorious to Jonny, is what he does, pink-cheeked and blue eyes shining and dimples out in full force, and when Patrick says, “I’m so proud of you, Jonny”, he can’t help but cup Patrick’s face in his sweaty palms and lift him into a kiss.

There’s an audible intake of breath around the arena, and when Jonny blinks his eyes open, he’s nearly blinded by the array of flashlights going off around him.

“Uh,” Patrick says breathlessly, hands fisted in the front of Jonny’s sweaty jersey. His lips are still mere millimetres away from Jonny’s, so close Jonny can feel the warm puffs of air with every exhale, and they’re red from the cold and Jonny’s mouth.

Jonny shrugs mentally, and dives in again; Patrick stiffens, like he’s trying to push away, but it’s only a second before he goes limp in Jonny’s arms and melts into their kiss, pressing himself against Jonny like he wants to sink into him and never leave.

Jonny wraps his arms tighter around Patrick, and savours his win.

 

 

 

 

 ****\---

Jonny has almost no recollection of the party after. He knows they go to Rockit first (because he’s still sober then), and pour bottle after bottle of champagne into the Cup; Jonny gets Patrick to kneel so he can feed him from it, and Patrick does without hesitation, fingers tight on Jonny’s calves as he tilts his head up with his mouth open. The champagne sloshes out of the bowl of the Cup, spilling over Patrick’s lips and chin, and when Jonny lifts the Cup away Patrick licks around his mouth, slow and deliberate, to catch the foam, and grins up at him.

It’s fucking obscene, and it’s absolutely not Jonny’s fault that he spends the rest of the night with a half-boner.

They move on to Scout after, and there’s more champagne, more drinks; Artemi buys the entire bar shots of neat vodka, and there are uproarious cheers for him when he climbs onto the bar counter and shimmies while holding two empty vodka bottles. Patrick nearly doubles over, he’s laughing so hard, and Jonny has to catch him around the waist to hold him upright.

Jonny doesn’t even realize his parents have left for the night until they arrive at the Pony Inn and are ushered into the private area on the second floor. He’s dizzy from the alcohol he’s already consumed and has to blink several times in the dark room in order to get his eyes to focus, but he’s craning his neck, looking for them over the heads of the team and their assorted wives and girlfriends, when Patrick comes up behind him and presses himself against Jonny’s back.

“Hey,” Jonny says, turning slightly to put an arm around Patrick’s waist and tug him close. Patrick smiles up at him, face ruddy from drink and his eyes bright, and Jonny leans down to kiss him on the cheek, right where his dimple is.

“Your parents have gone back to their hotel,” Patrick says into his ear over the throbbing music, instinctively knowing what Jonny wants, as usual. “They said they were tired and ordered me to take care of you.”

“Did they now,” Jonny says. He’s bone-tired, but the endorphins from the Cup win are churning through his body now, enough to make him boldly slide a hand down over Patrick’s flank, cupping his ass. “Did they say – like _how_?”

Patrick laughs and shoves at him a little, making him stumble backwards. Jesus, he’s dizzy. “Jonny,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jonny mumbles, ducking his head and catching Patrick’s mouth. He drags his lips over the warm plane of Patrick’s cheek and jaw, nuzzles into the hollow of his neck, but another wave of dizziness makes him sag against him. “Ah, fuck.”

Patrick catches his face in his hands, kisses him a little more, sweet little pecks like he’s sipping from Jonny’s lips. “C’mere,” he says. “You have to sit down.”

Jonny lets Patrick tug him into a corner; there are couches along the walls, but they’re all empty, the guys dancing in the middle of the room, yelling themselves hoarse and tossing back shots. Jonny spots Hammer and his wife, kissing right in the centre of the dance floor, before Patrick bundles him onto a couch and tells him to stay put.

“I’m going to get you some water,” he says, and disappears into the crowd; Jonny leans his head back against the soft velvet of the couch, letting his eyes slide closed.

It feels like no time at all when Jonny feels Patrick shaking him, and then the familiar, solid weight of him settling into his lap. He blinks his eyes open blearily, and Patrick presses an ice-cold glass of water against his cheek, making him yelp and jerk.

“Asshole,” he grumbles, but takes the glass from him and drinks deeply, handing it back to Patrick once he’s done.

Patrick wriggles closer to him, until Jonny can feel the heat of Patrick’s groin pressed right up on his abs, and he leans forward to nose along the sharp curve of Patrick’s jaw. “I wasn’t done from earlier,” he says, rubbing his playoffs beard against Patrick’s cheek, just to laugh when he squawks indignantly. The beard itches like hell, to be honest; Jonny can’t wait to get back and shave it all off, but before he does, he intends to lay Patrick out on their bed and eat him out until his ass and thighs are pink and hot from the bristles.

He whispers this to Patrick, lips brushing the shell of his ear, and grins as Patrick shudders in his lap.

“You dick,” Patrick says, already a little breathless as he pulls back to look at Jonny.

“A dick that you _like_ ,” Jonny counters.

Patrick’s eyes gleam, suddenly, bright in the dim gloom of the club. He says something, but so low that Jonny can’t hear him, and when he tilts his head down to hear better, Patrick flicks his tongue over his earlobe and says, still soft, “Want me to show you how much I like it?”

He rubs down as he says it, subtle, but enough to push his ass against Jonny’s cock with intent, and Jonny can feel himself thickening, despite all the weariness and the alcohol.

This is a bad idea, Jonny knows. The sofa he's on is in no way hidden from view, although the club is dark and noisy and flashing with strobe lights. The second floor is ostensibly reserved for Hawks players and their families and friends, but there are a ton of people Jonny doesn't know - serving slaves, cleaning slaves clearing dropped food, spilled alcohol and vomit, a group of well-dressed, immaculately-made-up women and men that Jonny is sure are rented pleasure slaves, bought just for the night.

Patrick slithers to his knees, on the ground between Jonny's thighs, and Jonny's about to reach out and grab his arm, tell him no, when he yanks the zipper of Jonny's jeans down and pulls his cock out from the slit in his boxers, smooth as silk. He looks up at Jonny and licks his lips, and that's it; Jonny sinks back into the cushions, mouth dropping open as Patrick feeds his cock into his mouth, inch by slow inch.

"Fuck," he says, inaudible in the noise around him, as he twines his fingers into Patrick's curls and holds on. It should be impossible to get hard, much less come, with the amount he's drunk; but it takes mere minutes for Patrick's sweet, wet mouth to coax him to full hardness.

Patrick keeps his mouth lax and soft, lapping at the head of Jonny's cock each time he pulls back, until Jonny's hitching his hips up unconsciously, trying to push his cock further into Patrick's mouth. When Jonny's close, Patrick sucks him all the way in and swallows him down like he doesn't need to breathe, throat working tight around Jonny's cockhead, and Jonny comes with his eyelids fluttering, strobing the dark-flash-dark-flash of the club even more.

Patrick sits back on his heels, looking satisfied, and licks a stray drop of come from the corner of his lips before hauling himself back into Jonny's lap. He kisses Jonny soft and sweet, in contrast to how he'd just been sucking Jonny's cock like a vacuum in public, and Jonny leans his sweaty forehead against Patrick's temple and kisses back, licking the taste of himself off Patrick's lips.

 

 

 

\---

Jonny wakes, disorientated, and flings his arm out, groping sleepily for Patrick beside him. His hand lands only on cool, smooth sheets. When he opens his eyes, the room is dark and silent. He sits up and blinks in the darkness; no Patrick anywhere.

His phone says 2:46 a.m. when he looks at it. God, he hates this, the first couple nights of waking up at strange hours while his body adjusts to a new timezone.

"Patrick?" he calls, hoarsely, swinging himself out of the bed and pulling on a pair of shorts, before padding out of the room. The terracotta tiled floor is cool under his feet as he trudges down the stairs, even though the villa itself is a little too warm for Jonny's liking. But once he steps outside, there's nothing but the soft rippling waters of the pool, and grass-scented wind ruffling through his hair.

Patrick's sitting naked by the side of the pool, his feet dangling in the water and swinging slowly. He's not - really doing anything, as far as Jonny can see, just staring out over at the lights of Montelupo Fiorentino glittering some distance away, his eyes glassy and unseeing. When Jonny comes up behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder, he actually _jumps_ with a gasp, and would have toppled into the pool if Jonny hadn't grabbed hold of his wrist.

"Jonny, oh my god," Patrick says. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"What are you doing? It's the middle of the night," Jonny says, settling down next to Patrick at the poolside. The water soaks into his shorts right away, but he doesn't care; it's nice being out here, in the dark and the quiet with Patrick, a soft breeze blowing. Jonny had rented this villa because the view from the pool looked spectacular in photographs. But right now, there's nothing but tiny lights in the distance, the chirping of cicidas, and Patrick pressed up against him. It's so peaceful and silent and different from Chicago; and Jonny likes it, a lot.

"Couldn't sleep," Patrick answers, kicking at the water.

Jonny's only had Patrick for ten months, but he knows when Patrick's hiding something, and the way Patrick averts his eyes from Jonny is enough for him to see that there's something more to it. "It's not just that, is it?" he says. "Something's bugging you."

Patrick sighs. "Not really," he says at last, keeping his eyes downcast, at where their legs are in the water, pressed together from ankle to knee. "Just, I feel really bad, Jonny. I'm sorry."

It's something they've gone over countless times, in the horrible three weeks after the celebrations at Pony Inn, when social media and news outlets alike had exploded over the grainy, shaky video of Patrick blowing Jonny in full view of everyone on the second level of the club. Jonny still has no idea who took the video and leaked it to the press, but that was a moot point, with the level of outrage it sparked. And he couldn't even deny it, not when it's undoubtedly his face and muttonchops beard in the video, thrown back on the couch with his mouth open as he came into Patrick's mouth.

Ordinarily it wouldn't mean anything - pleasure slaves are meant to be _used_ , after all, and they were in a private party - but Jonny's the captain, the face of the franchise, and somehow he's supposed to politely restrain himself from doing things others would do.

To say it was a disaster would be an understatement. His mother called him to tell him, coldly, how disappointed she was in Jonny, for doing such a thing in public, for _using_ Patrick like that in public. "I understand you bought him, Jonathan, and perhaps other people think nothing of using what they bought and paid for as if they're nothing more than furniture, but they're human, and I like to think I brought you up better than that."

McDonough had listened to his apology, shook his head, and then ordered Jonny to work with PR to issue a statement that was as contrite as possible. "You've embarrassed this organisation, Jonny," he said, and Jonny had never been more horrified. "I'll let it go once, but - never again. Do you understand? You cannot work with Blackhawks charities to rehabilitate abused slaves, and then publicly do such a thing with your own slave. I don't care if other people do it. You're the captain of the team, and you have an image to maintain."

But none of that had been anything to the way he felt, when he'd come home from a golf session with Hammer before Hammer had gone back to Sweden for the summer, to find Patrick quietly crying in the study, his hands clenched into fists so tight that his knuckles were white, as he read the online comments calling him a whore, calling for Jonny to be traded, calling for Patrick to be sold to a brothel, or some place for unwanted slaves. Patrick's humiliation was written in every single tear track etched into his face.

"I'm so sorry," he'd sobbed, when Jonny slammed the screen of the laptop down. "Jonny, I'm so sorry, please - "

It was in that moment that Jonny decided that, perhaps, it would be a good idea for the both of them to get out of Chicago for a while, until the mess had died down. And that night, while Patrick slept, he wrote an email to his lawyer, requesting that she get Patrick a passport and a slave visa tagged to Jonny's passport, clicked through Wikipedia a little, and then he'd remembered: he'd thought about going to Italy with Patrick. It didn't take him long after that to decide on Tuscany for their destination.

Now he reaches out and puts his arm around Patrick, pulls him into his chest; Patrick curls into it, looking and feeling so small. He wants to tell Patrick _it's fine_ , but the truth is - he's said this a thousand times, and it hasn't made a difference, and rolling waves of helplessness and protectiveness surge up in him in equal measures.

"Hey," he says instead. "How'd you feel about heading to Montelupo Fiorentino in the morning? I checked and we can rent a car there."

"Why'd we need a car?" Patrick says, muffled against his chest.

"You'll see," Jonny says.

\---

Florence is all stone, tiny winding cobbled streets, and magnificent architecture. It's a little difficult for Jonny to navigate into the city centre - he's constantly worried that he'll hit something or someone - but their small European coupé threads its way through like a dream. Jonny turns into a tiny street a couple of blocks away from the Duomo, drops the car into the first open space he sees, and hops out.

Patrick gets out more slowly, mouth open slightly as he looks around and takes in the imposing shadows of brick and stone buildings, tightly packed in rows around them, the ancient cobblestones of the ground beneath their feet. "It's beautiful," he breathes, colour in his cheeks and his blue eyes wide, and Jonny has never been so glad for a decision he's made.

"Hungry?" he asks. They'd left the villa with nothing more than a cup of coffee each, and the warmth of the day makes him think of walks in verdant parks - which gives him an idea.

Patrick nods. "Any place you want to eat at?"

"Actually," Jonny says, "the Boboli Gardens are just across the bridge there. I thought we could buy sandwiches and stuff, go to the gardens, have a picnic. What do you think?"

Patrick gives Jonny his brightest smile, dimples flashing. It's embarrassing how much that smile charms Jonny.

They stop at a _paninoteca_ , smelling of fragrant fresh bread, and get two sandwiches apiece; Patrick's eyes literally light up as the food is handed over to them, wrapped in paper and dripping with cheese. They get coffees as well, and water, but when they leave the shop and walk a few steps more, there's a tiny _pizza à taglio_ with a roaring stone oven in the back and a dizzying array of pizzas in the counter.

Patrick stops and turns a pleading look on Jonny, and Jonny shrugs, lets Patrick bound into the shop and pick out two huge slices of pizza, the crust thin and blistered and lovely, blobs of mozzarella melting deliciously into it. When he comes back out, he's practically beaming.

"Only a New Yorker would be so happy at the sight of pizza," Jonny teases.

"You can't get decent pizza in Chicago!" Patrick says, and Jonny laughs; then he ducks, as a couple of pigeons swoop low overhead.

"Holy shit," Jonny says. "There are fucking pigeons, _everywhere_."

Patrick looks at him disbelievingly. "Are you afraid of pigeons?" he asks.

"No, of course not," Jonny lies. "There are just so many of them in Florence!"

He hops to the edge of the street and clings to the stone wall of the building as they come across a flock of pigeons, while Patrick strides fearlessly through, sending them scattering and flying.

"Patrick, they're going to shit on you!" Jonny yells, scampering past the billowing wings until the street is clear.

Patrick stops and stares at Jonny.

"What?" Jonny says defensively, well out of shitting range of the pigeons.

Patrick doubles over and laughs so hard that when he finally straightens up again, there are tears in his eyes. Jonny scowls at him.

\---

Europe is far more open in its attitudes to slavery than America is; everywhere Jonny turns, there's a slave being led along on a leash, or easily identifiable by a slave cuff on their wrists or necks. They pass a restaurant where a loud, laughing group of people are seated outside, talking and drinking wine; there are at least four slaves in the group, two of whom are seated in their owners' laps, nibbling at the bites they're fed. One of them has a slave cuff around her neck made of thin filigree gold, looking more like a necklace than anything else; Jonny catches Patrick looking as they walk by, but he doesn't say anything.

He's pretty curious himself, actually. Canada's more open too, sure, but in North America he's always very conscious of how slaves are on a far lower stratum of society than most, and are expected to be treated as such. Here, slaves walk freely side by side with their owners, even if they are leashed; they talk and laugh as if they're couples on an outing, and no one bats an eyelash.

Jonny can't stop staring. In America Jonny can't even take Patrick to games without people talking about it all the damn time, or take Patrick out to dinner without seeing stupid comments online about how Jonny's being scandalous and 'not treating his slave the right way''.

A woman walks past them, leading her slave behind her with a thin silver chain looped onto the leather cuff at his wrist. He says something to her in rapid Italian, and she laughs; they turn into a stone path laid out next to the bench Jonny and Patrick are sitting on, and as they do the woman goes onto her tiptoes to give him a lingering kiss. They break away from each other after several long seconds, laugh again, and continue on their way.

Jonny's heart twists itself into a little bittersweet knot.

"How's the pizza?" he says out loud, instead.

Patrick lifts it to his mouth, folds it adroitly, and takes a bite at the very apex of the pizza triangle, strings of mozzarella lengthening and breaking as he pulls the slice away.

"It's delicious," he says, without looking at Jonny.

\---

Sometime between the walk from the gardens to the Ponte Vecchio, Jonny takes Patrick's hand.

It's not like he's never done it before, of course - but usually only in private functions, where there are people Jonny knows and trusts, and never like this in public, on a warm July day, with the sun beating down and people strolling past them without staring. He _can't_ do this, normally. There'd be photos hitting social media within minutes.

Patrick's fingers twine into his as if he's done it all his life, and right then a man walks by, his slave next to him. He's not leashed, but he's easily identified by the slave cuff round his neck, and they're holding hands too. The man nods at Jonny as they brush past on the narrow street, and so does the slave, smiling. It takes Jonny a couple of seconds to nod and smile back; he's a little thrown by how natural it all is.

Patrick's looking wistful, his hand holding on tight to Jonny's, which prompts him to ask entirely on impulse, "Do you wish we could be like that, back home?"

Patrick lifts his eyes to Jonny's, startled. "I - guess," he begins, and drops his eyes again. His next words are so soft Jonny has to strain to hear them. "I always wish that."

And Jonny just - Jonny wants this so badly, all of a sudden, so much that it hurts, not just for himself but for Patrick; Patrick who's never asked anything of Jonny, who's taken everything Jonny gives or doesn't give him without complaint, who wants nothing more than the freedom to stand next to Jonny in public: the one thing Jonny can't give him.

Now, he squeezes Patrick's hand tighter and draws him close to his body, so he's pressed all alongside him, a long line of heat from shoulder to hip. He dips his head to press a kiss to Patrick's temple.

"Then we'll have to make the most of this vacation," he murmurs, and Patrick nods.

\---

On the Ponte Vecchio, Jonny's distracted by the sight of thousands about thousands of what looks like padlocks, locked to the railings along the bridge. The sea of padlocks gets thicker as they move along the bridge, culminating around the fountain in the middle of the bridge, where a bronze bust of Benvenuto Cellini stands.

Patrick has Jonny take a photo of him standing in front of the bust, arms spread wide, and then he tugs Jonny in so they can take a selfie. When they're done, Jonny turns the phone around to look at the photo, and there it is: Patrick bright and laughing and dimpled as he presses his cheek against Jonny's, Jonny squinting because they're facing the sun and he doesn't have his sunglasses on.

It's all Jonny can do, to stand there and stare at the photograph in his phone. It's the first photo he's ever taken together with Patrick. He's never thought of doing so back in Chicago, somehow; it's just never occurred to him. But - they look good together, Jonny thinks unbidden, like an actual couple, as if they're just normal partners in love (love?) on a vacation - and then he blinks confusedly as someone approaches him and Patrick and shakes fistfuls of padlocks in their faces.

"Lock, yes? You want?" the man says, grinning, his English accented but understandable.

Patrick tilts his head. "What are these locks for?" he asks, gesturing at the ones padlocked to the bridge railings all around them.

"For love," the man answers. "Couples come, they buy, they lock onto the bridge. Key, throw into water. Is most romantic, means will be forever love, for the couple."

"Love," Jonny repeats dumbly.

"Yes," the man says. "You want buy? Is good price. For forever love, with your boyfriend." He jerks his chin at Patrick.

Patrick turns a shade so flaming red, so fast, that Jonny is momentarily distracted by the spread of the deep flush across his cheeks.

"Uh," he begins.

"Come on," the man cajoles. "You don't want forever love with your boyfriend?"

"He's not - we're not - " Patrick says helplessly, still red.

Jonny looks at Patrick, at their fingers twined together, Patrick's golden curls blown into a mess by the wind around his face; the man's smile is beginning to falter, a small frown appearing between his brows - and Jonny swallows, his heart pounding in his chest, and says, "We'll take one."

The man beams, and Patrick swings around to stare at Jonny, his blue eyes wide and disbelieving.

"Jonny?" he says, tentative, as if he's afraid Jonny's brain is fried, or something.

Jonny points at the bunches of padlocks the man is holding. "Pick one," he says, aware that his voice is shaking ever so slightly. "Make sure it's a pretty one."

Patrick blinks, but does as he's told, stepping up obediently to sift through the locks. He doesn't let go of Jonny's hand, though, and it's that that makes Jonny feel calmer, his heart slowing down instead of feeling like it's going to burst right out of his throat, the warm, solid feel of Patrick's fingers threaded through his, grounding him.

"This one," Patrick says, and selects a bright burnished silver padlock. It's larger than most of the others, with a big keyhole for an equally large silver key, but Jonny's already used to Patrick's penchant for big, bright things for everything from belt buckles to necklaces, so he doesn't say anything; but he's surprised when Patrick turns back to him, smiling brilliantly, and says, "The bigger the better, right?"

The man nods and says, "Good choice! Bigger also means longer love." He waggles his eyebrows, and Patrick promptly turns scarlet again.

Jonny feels a little lightheaded after they've paid, as if he's a little outside his own body watching himself, as Patrick leads him to the side of the bridge to look for an open spot for their padlock.

"Here?" Patrick asks, pointing.

"Yeah," Jonny says, his voice sounding strange and faraway to himself, still feeling like he's in a soft, slow, dreamlike state.

Patrick holds the open lock out to Jonny; Jonny takes the proffered end of the body, and together they bring the padlock to the railing, hook the shackle over, and then - Jonny feels the click in his bones, as if this little act carries far more enormity and gravity than it should - lock it shut.

"The key?" Jonny asks.

Patrick turns his hand up, and there it is, glinting in the sun. There's a stylised rose embossed into the bow of the key, and Jonny is once again reminded: love.

"Together?" Patrick says.

Jonny nods. "Together."

Patrick curls his hand around the large rose of the bow; Jonny puts his hand over Patrick's, and together they lift up, throw the key out over the rail. The key arcs gracefully into the air, catches the sun so that it looks bathed in fire for a brief moment, and then it falls, straight down, into the waters of the Arno River with a small splash.

Patrick looks up at Jonny, shaking his curls back from his face, and smiles. He opens his mouth - Jonny thinks he's going to say something like that was fun, or whatever, but before he can, Jonny cups Patrick's cheek in his palm, his thumb dipping into the depression of Patrick's dimple; and then he kisses him.

Even after they stop, they stand there for a long while, Patrick's arms wound tight around Jonny's waist, keeping him close.

\---

The moment they're back in their villa, Jonny backs Patrick up against the front door the moment it shuts behind them, and kisses him again, desperate and urgent. His need for Patrick is fiery right now, and he doesn't even understand why; he just knows he _needs_ Patrick, and now.

"Slow down, Jonny," Patrick says, laughter in his voice, when Jonny begins tearing at his clothes, hands shaking as they tug at the button of Patrick's jeans.

"Can't," Jonny breathes, biting at Patrick's full lower lip. "Fuck your fucking jeans, Pat - "

The moment he gets Patrick's jeans and boxers off, he spins him around so Patrick's cheek and chest are pushed against the door, and then he drops to his knees with a thud.

"Jonny - " Patrick says, and then he bites off into a groan as Jonny spreads his cheeks, the heft of his buttocks smooth and perfect in Jonny's hands, and licks a long stripe upwards from his balls to his sacral dimple.

Patrick thumps a fist against the door. "Oh, fuck," he cries out, when Jonny does it again, stopping at his hole this time, the flat of his tongue flattened against it.

God, they've barely even started and Jonny already feels heady from this, from pushing all these sounds out of Patrick. It's still amazing to him, even after all these months, to see and hear and feel how sensitive Patrick is.

He flutters his tongue lightly around Patrick's hole, and Patrick gasps, his glutes tightening in Jonny's hands, when Jonny licks in.

Patrick whimpers when Jonny curls his tongue inside him; Jonny loves doing this, licking Patrick's sweet little hole while Patrick goes to pieces above him, his legs shaking. He pulls back long enough to hook a finger into Patrick, tugging at the rim so his hole opens up for him, gathers the spit in his mouth, and licks into him again.

Jonny eats him out until Patrick's barely standing upright, hips hitching uselessly back towards Jonny's mouth and forward at the door, until there's spit dripping down Jonny's chin and the cleft of Patrick's ass, sliding in rivulets down his balls. Jonny ducks down to lick up the strings of saliva over Patrick's balls, and pushes them back inside Patrick with his tongue.

His knees are numb from kneeling, but he can't care less - when he glances up, Patrick has his cheek against the door, his eyes closed, his mouth open. He's actually drooling, completely lost in the pleasure of it, of Jonny's tongue taking him apart.

"I want you to come," Jonny says, words muffled by how his lips are snug against the soft pucker of Patrick's hole. Patrick moans, works his hips back, tries to get Jonny's tongue back inside him.

"Ride my tongue, Patrick, c'mon," Jonny encourages, shaking Patrick's ass gently. He slides his tongue over Patrick's hole to reinforce his words, up and down, listening to how each pass over it makes Patrick groan. "You wanna come, babe?"

Patrick nods jerkily.

"Then you gotta take it for yourself," Jonny says. "Ride my tongue, come on. Use it to make yourself come, baby."

Patrick pushes his hips back, tentatively, and Jonny keeps his tongue still, so Patrick can find the best angle to fuck himself on it.

He keeps his hands up against the door, curled into fists, because Jonny hasn't told him he can touch himself - and in any case, he doesn't need to. All Jonny needs to do is hold still; but as Patrick's movements get more frantic, the firm muscles of his ass tensing and rippling around Jonny, Jonny has to undo his jeans and tug his cock out so he can fist it slowly, just to take the edge off. He's so turned on he feels dizzy.

"Oh fuck," Patrick pants above him, eyes squeezed shut, "oh, Jonny, _fuck_ \- "

He flails one hand blindly behind him until it lands on the top of Jonny's head; Jonny lets him grab at his hair, feels Patrick trying desperately to push his face into his ass and get his tongue in as far as it can go. He obliges, wriggling his tongue deep inside Patrick, and then Patrick stiffens, his thighs and ass going rigid as he strains against Jonny.

Patrick slams his fist against the door again, and then he's coming; Jonny can feel it in the way his hole spasms and flutters around his tongue, as Patrick shudders and moans Jonny's name, over and over.

He staggers sideways a little, his legs wobbling dangerously, and Jonny holds him steady.

"Oh my god," Patrick moans, sounding completely fucked out already, but Jonny's not done.

"I'm not done yet," he says out loud. He reaches past Patrick's thighs to swipe some of his come off the door, trickling slowly downwards in a viscous stream, and pulls himself upright, ignoring the creaking protest in his knees. He rubs his come-covered fingers over Patrick's left nipple, dragging a soft gasp out of him, before bringing them to Patrick's full, reddened lips, sliding them into his mouth.

"Yeah," he says hoarsely, watching as Patrick licks every drop off his fingers. He kisses the back of Patrick's neck. "I'm going to make you come so much tonight, Patrick, you're going to beg me to stop. And I'll just keep going."

Patrick's knees buckle; Jonny laughs, picks him up and slings him over one shoulder in a fireman's carry.

"Jonny!" Patrick says, his voice high and squeaky, but Jonny climbs the stairs without missing a step, kicking open the door to their bedroom and dropping Patrick onto the bed.

"You're crazy, you know that?" Patrick complains, but his eyes are fixed on Jonny's cock, hard and flushed and wet at the tip.

"I guess I am," Jonny says. For you,, he adds in the recesses of his mind.

Patrick mock-sighs. "Come here then, big stud," he says, not even at all jokingly, and scoots further up the bed to give Jonny room to climb on. He spreads his legs and lifts them, and for a moment it's all Jonny can see: Patrick trustingly, unquestioningly, offering himself to Jonny in the most gorgeous way, his pale thighs pulled up and apart. His hole, when Jonny looks at it, is still gleaming wet.

Jonny licks his thumb and presses it to Patrick's hole; the tip sinks in easily, as if they don't even need lube at all, and Jonny's seized with this almost-overwhelming compulsion to just take his cock in hand and push into Patrick without using any lube, feel Patrick as close to him as possible, skin to skin.

Patrick nudges him in the thigh with his toe, just a little, and Jonny looks down to see that he's already got his cock in his left hand, absently pulling his foreskin down, as if he's readying himself to fuck Patrick right away.

"You here with me?" Patrick asks, the corner of his lip curling up amusedly.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," Jonny mumbles, and reaches over Patrick for the bottle of lube lying on its side on the nightstand.

He doesn't bother with prepping Patrick too much - Patrick's warm and soft inside, relaxed from his orgasm, and Jonny slides two lubed fingers into him without much resistance. He fingers Patrick for a bit, just to push the lube into him more than anything else, slicks himself up as fast as he can, and fucks into Patrick with a quick snap of his hips.

Patrick, the little asshole, clenches around Jonny on his first thrust in, and Jonny's breath stutters. "You little asshole," he says, shifting his grip from Patrick's knees to the backs of his thighs, so he can push against them, spread his legs open wider. Patrick laughs, a sound that's choked off into a moan, when Jonny yanks him bodily into his lap, his ass cradled against Jonny's thighs and his legs splayed open around Jonny's hips. His dick is already stiffening as Jonny watches, swelling against the tautness of his abs.

"Yeah, baby," Jonny murmurs, pushing Patrick's legs even further back, until his knees are nearly at his chest. He gets his knees under the base of Patrick's spine, lifting him off the bed, and shoves his cock in as deep as he can get it. "Take it, come on. Gonna make you come all over us again. "

Patrick's teeth sink into his full, pink bottom lip, leaving white indentations. Jonny can feel his ass squeezing around his cock, and he looks down at where his cock is sunk into Patrick. Patrick's taking him in so prettily. He pulls out, slowly, just to see the way he stretches open the rim of Patrick's hole.

"Fuck," Jonny says, his voice deepening to a rasp. "You're so pretty, Patrick. Look at your ass, if only you could see it. Clutching at my cock so nicely."

Patrick moans a little; his cock darkens and thickens until he's almost fully hard.

"That's a good boy," Jonny says, fucking back into Patrick. "You love my cock, don't you? Love getting stuffed so full. I'm gonna keep it in you all night, baby."

"Yeah," Patrick says, eyelashes fluttering. He arches his back a little, enough that Jonny's cock slips in just the tiniest bit more, impossibly deep. "S' good, Jonny."

Jonny gives it to him, exactly what he wants, long deep strokes that nail his prostate exactly and leave him gasping and writhing, so that Jonny has to keep a tight grip on his thighs. He thinks there might be bruises, finger marks left there, when he's done, and finds that he doesn't exactly mind.

It'd usually take Patrick longer to come once he already has, but it's like he's caught whatever urgency Jonny has in him, because his whole body begins tightening up, the way it does right before he's going to come. His cock is dripping a gleaming trail of precome onto his abs. It's fucking gorgeous. Everything about Patrick is gorgeous.

"I'm coming," Patrick gasps, his eyes falling shut, and there it is, the tight contraction of Patrick's muscles around him as he fucks him through it, watches as Patrick streaks the skin of his stomach with come.

Jonny lets his eyes run over Patrick - his flushed cheeks, red bitten mouth, the lovely delineation of the muscles across his chest and stomach tensing and relaxing intermittently, his nipples standing out peaked and stiff from arousal - and to his shock, he's coming before it even registers, his cock swelling inside Patrick.

"Oh fuck," he says, and pulls out - Patrick actually whines - and watches in half in disbelief, half in a coursing tide of pleasure, as he takes one hand off Patrick's thigh to work the last few spurts of come out onto Patrick's reddened, clutching hole.

"I wasn't going to come so fast," Jonny gasps, laughter bubbling up in him.

"It's my ass," Patrick says, breathing hard, and managing to muster a brilliant grin at him. His eyes are glassy and huge and blue when he gazes up at Jonny.

"Sure it is," Jonny says, and slaps him lightly on the aforementioned ass. Then he does it again, because he really likes the reddened mark his hand leaves on Patrick's pale, smooth skin, and the way Patrick whimpers when he does it.

"I wasn't supposed to come so fast," he continues, using two fingers to swipe at his own come, messy over Patrick's hole. "I said I'd keep you on my cock all night, make you come over and over." He pushes his come into Patrick as he speaks, stopping every so often to watch it drip out of him, before pushing it back inside. It's just - he feels kind of depraved, truth be told, but he can't stop. The need that was raging inside him, the need to - to possess Patrick utterly, is still burning in his mind.

"Want to keep my come inside you all the time, sweetheart," he murmurs, and Patrick gasps; Jonny's never used such an endearment with him before. "If I could keep you plugged up all day, I would. Want you going about your day with my come still wet inside you." He slides three fingers into Patrick as he speaks, and keeps them there, like he's really plugging Patrick with his fingers; and when he eases them out again, he rubs his fingertips over Patrick's lips, until Patrick licks over them, tongue lazily curling across Jonny's skin, dipping into the spaces between his fingers, cleaning them.

"Your mouth," Jonny whispers. "Love your mouth - " and he's aware he's babbling, by now, the filthy words spilling out of him unbidden, so he leans over to kiss Patrick; Patrick meets him eagerly, his lips soft against Jonny's.

They kiss, and kiss, until Jonny slithers down Patrick's body to eat him out again, holding him open with two fingers hooked into his rim, everything sticky with Jonny's come.

Jonny kind of loses track of time after that - he remembers turning Patrick over onto his stomach, fucking into him again, mouth pressed to the back of Patrick's neck and his weight keeping Patrick in place on the bed, Patrick clutching around his cock when he comes. He remembers them on their sides, Patrick rocking back on his fingers, sobbing into his fist, his hole wet and loose and warm, while he murmurs words into Patrick's velvety skin, his breath fluffing Patrick's golden curls.  _Mine_ , he whispers. _Mine, mine_.

Patrick says something, his face turned into his pillow, and Jonny can't make it out, but Jonny remembers saying into Patrick's shoulder, _love you_ , and Patrick cries out and comes again, and Jonny - Jonny doesn't remember Patrick saying anything back at all.

\---

It's nearly five in the morning when Jonny gets out of bed on wobbly legs, and makes his way down to the kitchen in the dark, to get bottles of water out of the fridge, as many as he can carry without collapsing.

Patrick's lying on his back when he comes back into the bedroom, limbs starfished out on the bed. Everything's a mess - the sheets are in a state, Jonny doesn't even dare to look too closely; there's come and lube everywhere, and Patrick's skin is mottled with the marks of little bites and kisses and bruises. There's come all over him too, and he's already fast asleep, completely knocked out from exhaustion.

Jonny - Jonny feels bad. He has no idea what came over him, that feverish, consuming desire, and the things he said -

Christ.

"Hey," he whispers to Patrick, sliding an arm under his shoulders and lifting him gently. "Patrick, baby. Wake up. Come on, babe. You need some water."

"Mfhgmf?" is Patrick's eloquent response. His voice is rough and raspy.

"Water," Jonny repeats. He twists the cap off one bottle with his teeth, holds it to Patrick's mouth. "Open up - that's it, baby."

Patrick drinks half the bottle at one go, throat working, before Jonny lifts the bottle from his lips and gets him to take a few deep breaths. He gives the rest to Patrick, watches closely as he finishes it off.

"Good boy," he says, tossing the bottle aside - he'll clean everything up in the daytime - and pressing a kiss to Patrick's sweaty curls. "That's it, you're so good. Always so good for me."

Patrick mumbles something unintelligible, already slipping back into sleep.

Jonny downs a bottle of water himself as fast as he can swallow, and arranges himself behind Patrick like a cocoon, wrapping his arms and legs around him. He presses his nose to the nape of Patrick's neck and inhales; Patrick smells like him. It's - comforting, somehow, for Jonny, to know that he's left his mark all over Patrick.

 _Love you_ , his brain whispers to Patrick's sleeping figure, and Jonny shuts his eyes and tries to sleep.

\---

Patrick walks into the kitchen the next day near noon when Jonny's making lunch - omelettes with prosciutto, bell peppers, and onions, all picked up from the farmer's market in Montelupo Fiorentino. His hair's a mess, there are pillow creases on his cheeks, and his blue eyes are crusty. He's still the most gorgeous thing Jonny's ever seen.

He stops when he sees Jonny, and flushes a brilliant red. Jonny's confused - it's not like they have never fucked in filthy ways - and then he remembers the shit he said to Patrick last night, and he turns away quickly, looking down at his skillet.

"Hey," he says, falsely bright.

"Hey," Patrick says softly. And then there's silence save for the sizzling of the eggs.

It's ridiculous, Jonny thinks, as he flips the omelette. Patrick didn't even hear whatever he said, he doesn't think - so why the hell are they suddenly acting like strangers?

"Help me get plates, Patrick?" he says, and is relieved that his tone is back to normal, no longer the overly-sunshiney it had been.

"Yeah, of course," Patrick says, and when he comes up next to Jonny to stand on his tiptoes and reach to open the cabinets, Jonny leans over and kisses him on the cheek. It's a good thing Patrick isn't carrying any plates then, because he sucks in a breath and nearly jumps.

Jonny pretends not to notice anything, and concentrates on flipping.

But later, when he's plated the omelettes and fetched orange juice from the fridge, Patrick slides onto one of the stools at the kitchen island - and immediately winces, standing straight back up.

Jonny bites the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting out in laughter.

"Don't laugh!" Patrick says.

"I'm not!" Jonny says hastily. "It's just - "

"What?"

"You just, you are so fucking _cute_ ," Jonny says, and leans over the island to kiss him full on the mouth.

Patrick's flushing again when they separate; his tongue comes out to lick along the seam of his lips, as if he's trying to get all of Jonny's taste, and Jonny finds himself following the movement. It's absolutely ridiculous how much he wants Patrick.

"I'm twenty-three, that's not cute," Patrick says, looking cute as fuckall with his tousled hair and his lower lip pushed forward in a pout.

"Okay," Jonny agrees easily. "Let's eat on the sofa, and watch something on my laptop. Okay?"

"Band of Brothers?" Patrick asks.

"Sure," Jonny says, and Patrick smiles at him, his dimples flashing; Jonny can't help it, he has to lean forward to kiss Patrick again.

\---

Their flight to Winnipeg is uneventful - or it would be, if not for Jonny's brain working overtime.

Okay. So he's in love with Patrick. Kind of a shock, yeah, but the more Jonny thinks on it, the more he feels that maybe this was in the wings all along, just waiting for its time. Did he really expect that he could buy a pleasure slave, and live with him day in and day out, and have no other emotion for him apart from sexual desire?

It doesn't have to - change anything, he thinks. Their life can go on as usual, until Patrick's debt bondage is paid off and he returns to his family, or - or if he wants to go to a new owner.

Jonny can feel the goosebumps rising on his skin at the thought of Patrick belonging to someone else, being touched by someone else - being with someone else who's not Jonny, and he takes hold of Patrick's left hand without even thinking about it, winding his fingers around Patrick's.

Patrick stirs against his shoulder where he's asleep, mouth open and pink, and Jonny relaxes his grip, but leaves his hand where it is, stroking gently along Patrick's fingers.

Patrick has nice hands: thick fingers, strong square palms, Jonny's always thought that. Patrick's still too shy to come on the ice with him after practices, even when the team and coaches are gone, but a few times Jonny's seen him curling a hand around Jonny's stick tentatively, thumb rubbing against the knob of tape on it. He might have been a great player if things had been different for him, Jonny muses, tapping the pad of his index finger against Patrick's fourth finger.

It's a couple minutes more of these aimless musings when Jonny registers - he's rubbing over Patrick's ring finger, again and again, like he's sizing him for a ring.

He jerks his finger away like it's burned, and Patrick stirs again, tilting his face up to Jonny. His eyelashes are splayed out along his cheek, and he's so beautiful it makes Jonny's heart ache. Jonny has to turn away and look out at the aisle of the plane, so he doesn't do something completely stupid like, wake Patrick up and - and what? Beg Patrick to marry him?

It's completely laughable. Patrick hadn't even said anything to him about that crazy night Jonny had said he loved him, had just acted as if it never happened. Jonny can play at that game, but he gets it - Patrick doesn't love him. That's fine. He just owns Patrick, for this period of time, and only for sex. There is no universe in which Patrick's going to love the man who bought him for his own pleasure.

That's perfectly fine with Jonny, and if Patrick's not going to bring it up, neither will he.

He looks down at their linked hands and, his chest seizing, gently disengages his hand.

\---

Andree greets Patrick like he's one of her sons, throwing her arms around him and kissing him on both cheeks even before she turns to hug and kiss Jonny.

"Oh, you both look so good," she coos. "So healthy and tanned. That break did you boys good." She takes Patrick's arm, and tells Jonny in French to pick up the luggage and come in after them.

"Tell me all about the trip, Patrick," she says, settling him at the kitchen island. "And I got you éclairs, Jonathan says you like them." She bustles about the kitchen as she speaks, getting plates and forks, opening the fridge door. "Jonathan, go put the bags in your bedroom."

"Are those éclairs from _A L'Epi de Ble_?" Jonny demands, when his mother brings out the familiar box from the refrigerator.

"Yes," Andree says, and slaps his hand away lightly when he reaches out for the box. "Bags first, _cher_." She turns to Patrick and, in the same breath, tells him to help himself. " _A L'Epi de Ble_ is one of the best French bakeries in Winnipeg, Patrick. I'm partial to their macarons myself, and I bought some for you to try too."

"Am I your son or is he?" Jonny mutters under his breath in French, and his mother frowns at him.

"You both are," she says, completely serious, and it's like a sudden electric jolt to Jonny's skin. His _mother_ thinks of Patrick as part of her family. _Fuck_.

"Go on," Andree says, and taps him gently on the arm; he realises that he's just been standing and staring at her, mouth agape. "Put all that luggage away, and come back and tell me all about Florence."

When Jonny comes back from his task he's greeted by the sight of his mother and his - his whatever Patrick is now, bent over the island where Patrick's presumably showing her the photographs from their trip on his iPhone. There's something about their heads close together, his mother's ash blonde against Patrick's gold curls, that's just - it makes Jonny's heart stutter in his chest. Patrick looks like he belongs, here in Jonny's condo in Winnipeg, with Jonny's family.

Patrick looks up and turns around. He has chocolate cream at the corner of his lips, remnant of an éclair. "Jonny!" he says happily. "Come and eat."

"Oh, I like this picture," Andree says, smiling, and as Jonny nears them she tilts the phone so he can see: the picture of him and Patrick on the Ponte Vecchio, cheek pressed to cheek, Patrick grinning brightly. Jonny can feel his face heating up, and before his sharp-eyed mother can notice it, he reaches across her to grab an éclair, shoving half of it into his mouth at one go. Patrick's kind of staring at him, though, not at Andree or the photo, and it's a little discomfiting, so he raises his hand and swipes the bit of chocolate off Patrick's mouth with his thumb, hoping to distract him and give himself something to do.

"I like that one too," Patrick says softly, and the way he says it makes Jonny feel like he's about to vibrate out of his skin.

\---

Andree orders them both to go to bed early because they're both jetlagged, so they do, but long after Patrick's fallen asleep tucked against Jonny's side, Jonny's still wide awake, blinking at the ceiling. He doesn't usually find it difficult to sleep, especially not when Patrick's with him; but now he finds himself quietly climbing out of bed, tucking the covers around Patrick, and padding out of the bedroom to the kitchen.

His mother's there, with her reading glasses on and reading a French magazine, a cup of tea in front of her. Jonny knows his mother's nightly habit of taking chamomile tea before bedtime, and as he slides onto the stool next to her, he feels comforted, like he's back to being a child again and knowing that his mother would always be here, at this time, if he needed her.

"Something you want to tell me, Jonathan?" she asks, putting her magazine down and taking her glasses off.

"Maman - " Jonny begins, and then he stops and looks down at his hands, trying to think of what to say.

Andree gets up and begins making a cup of tea for him as well, in her calm, unhurried way, and when she puts the cup on its saucer in front of him, he takes her by the hand. "Maman, I'm in love with Patrick," he says. The words spill out of him, like he's unblocked them within himself, and it's - surprisingly easy, to say them to his mother.

She smiles and shakes her head, the way she used to do when Jonny did something dumb and scraped a knee, or lost a toy. "I asked if you wanted to tell me anything, not something I already know, _cher_ ," she says teasingly.

"Maman," Jonny says, his cheeks feeling hot again.

She pats his cheek tenderly. "I won't tease you anymore, I know it's a serious matter to you. It _is_ serious, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Jonny replies. "But - Maman, when we go back to Chicago, I intend to buy out the remainder of Patrick's debt."

"And then?"

"And then - I'll let him go," Jonny says. He swallows against the aching lump in his throat. "He'll be free, he can go home to his parents, do whatever he wants."

There's a pause, and then Andree says, "I didn't know letting him go is what you want. You love him, do you not? So why are you letting him leave you?"

"Because he doesn't love me, Maman," Jonny says miserably. "I told him that, in Italy - I said I loved him, and he never responded. He didn't even say anything the next day. It's like he decided the words didn't exist. _He doesn't love me_."

Andree sighs. "Have you asked Patrick?"

"What?"

Jonny's startled - he'd been thinking of the flight home, where he'd held Patrick's hand and looked at his bare ring finger and thought about asking Patrick to -

"Have you spoken to Patrick about this?" his mother asks. "Have you told him, this is what you intend to do, and ask him if he wants it? And talk to him, like an adult who does not run from things, about being in love with him?"

"No?" Jonny says, bewildered. "I mean - I'm setting him free, what slave wouldn't want that - "

"I'm sure they do, and I'm sure he does wish that, too," Andree interrupts, "but have you never considered that he might want to stay with you, even if you free him?"

"How?" Jonny asks, completely at sea. "And - why would he?"

His mother raises her eyes heavenwards. "Jonathan, I thought I raised you to be better than this. _Talk to him_. Go out tomorrow morning, take a walk or a drive, think about what you want to say. And then come back, and speak to him properly, before you do something you'll regret."

"Like?" Jonny says; he thinks he knows the answer, but he - needs to hear it from someone else.

"Like losing him forever, even if it's something neither you nor he want," she says. "Do you think you could deal with that, Jonathan? Never seeing him again, always wondering how and where he is, whether he's well, whether he's with someone else - or worse, maybe in bondage again, if his family is back in debt? Could you stand that? Because if you tell me now that you can, then Patrick's not the boy for you, and I'll tell you to forget him and find another."

There is no one on earth who knows just how to jab at his weak spots, peel his heart open like an onion, like his mother does.

"Okay, yeah, you've made your point clear, Maman," Jonny says. He feels like his throat is full of cotton, it's so dry. "I'll speak to him tomorrow."

"See that you do," Andree says. "Now drink your tea, and then go back to bed."

Jonny obediently does as he's told.

\---

Jonny's actually - not really thinking much, at all. He's worked out for a couple of hours, and it feels good, to be sweating it out, working his muscles, letting his mind just white out until he gets that satisfied ache he does at the end of a long gruelling practice. But - it's not very conducive to working on his problem about Patrick.

He's walking up Portage Avenue when he sees it: [Vandenbergs'](http://www.vandenbergs.ca/) shopfront. It's actually the reflected gleam of the noon sun off the windows, and the displays in them, that catches his eye. He goes over for a closer look, and there are rows upon rows of exquisite jewellery, glittering in the sunlight, so many pieces that they're almost blinding. There are necklaces of pearls and diamonds, thick bangles inset with gems of all sorts, earrings that droop with enormous diamonds. Jonny knows nothing about jewellery - and why would he, he's never bought anything; he knows his mother has a few nice pieces, but he doesn't even know how to judge a diamond's clarity, or whatever it's called.

But his eye is drawn to a display in another of the windows - it's just a single ring displayed, a round sparkling diamond set atop a band - but a sign behind it reads "Engagement Rings", and in smaller print below that, "Custom Rings - create a piece as individual as the person who will wear it".

And it's like - an earthquake, basically, shaking Jonny to his core. Jonny has never believed in signs, or superstitions, or anything like that, but it's as if he suddenly knows what he has to do, and he pushes open the door to the jeweller's, his feet taking him there before his mind has really caught on to the enormity of what he's doing.

"Good day, sir," someone says, holding the door open for him, and smiling at Jonny. The woman is dressed in a smart blouse and skirt, and Jonny's suddenly very aware of the fact that he's in flip flops and a tank top and workout shorts, his gym bag slung over his shoulder. He probably looks like a hobo, and this place - it's really nice, plush deep blue wall to wall carpeting and smiling, smartly-dressed assistants behind cases of expensive gems. The woman does not seem to care or mind, just tilts her head and asks, "Is there anything we can help you with today?"

"Uh, yeah," Jonny says, awkwardly shifting his weight and rubbing the back of his neck. "I saw that you have, uh, custom rings?"

"We do," she says. "Do you already know what you want?"

"Um, I hadn't actually thought about it," Jonny admits.

The woman smiles. "That won't be a problem. Perhaps if you follow me, sir, and I'll get one of our consultants to attend to you, show you our portfolio of custom rings we've done?"

"Yeah, of course," Jonny says, and follows her across the room to the back, trying to keep his flip flops from making too much noise against his feet.

"What sort of occasion is this for, sir?" she asks, when she's seated him in a small booth at the back of the shop.

"Occasion?"

"Is it a gift for your wife, mother? A birthday gift? Or a marriage proposal?"

"It's, uh, for a - a pro - proposal, I guess," Jonny says, stumbling embarrassingly over the word. "And for - a guy. Not a - I mean, it's for a dude." Then he winces inwardly at how he sounds.

The woman just nods calmly. Jonny wonders how calm she'd be if he told her the ring was for his pleasure slave. "Just sit tight, and someone will be with you soon. Can I get you a drink? San Pellegrino, Evian, juice, tea or coffee?"

"Just an Evian, please," Jonny says, licking his dry lips.

"Of course, sir," she says, and turns away.

There's a couple who have just walked in through the door, the young woman clinging to the man's arm as they stop before a display of necklaces. Jonny watches them, for lack of a better thing to do, and when the woman rubs at her neck, Jonny sees with a shock that she's wearing a slave cuff around it. It's not leather, like slave cuffs usually tend to be, but of thin burnished metal, and there's a blood-red gem - a ruby, maybe - set into the centre of it, right at her throat.

Her owner is saying something to an assistant, gesturing animatedly at his slave's throat. Jonny can just pick up enough to figure out that he wants to get her a new slave cuff.

The woman who had spoken to him returns with his water, and Jonny asks her, "So do a lot of people come in with, um, their pleasure slaves?"

"Oh yes, of course," the woman says, looking mildly surprised. "It's quite common, you know. People enjoy spoiling their pleasure slaves. We can customise a cuff to any specification they'd like. Many don't even buy cuffs, they just want to pamper their slaves with a nice piece of jewellery."

"I see," Jonny says, swallowing.

"Will you be getting something for a slave, sir, on top of the engagement ring?" the woman asks, but she's smiling, and there's no malice or curiosity in her voice, just a matter-of-fact question.

Jonny hesitates. Then he says, very firmly, "No, I'm not."

\---

When it comes down to selecting what he wants, it's faster than Jonny expected, but it still takes nearly three hours. He's gone through Vandenbergs' portfolio, the consultant has talked him through materials, gems, and whatnot, but he still comes back to the same thing, in the end.

"You can take some time to think about it, and come back to us, when you've decided on what you want."

"This is what I want," Jonny says.

"That's very good, Mr. Toews," the very patient lady says, typing into an iPad. "We can have this completed in three weeks."

"One week," Jonny tells her.

She widens her eyes at him. "One week is not possible, I'm afraid - "

"I'll pay double," Jonny interrupts. "I need it by this week. Make it possible."

The woman pauses. "I suppose a proposal cannot wait," she says delicately.

"This one can't," Jonny says.

She taps more at her iPad. "One week. You may pick it up next Tuesday."

It's actually eight days, not exactly one week, but Jonny supposes he can let small things like these go, as long as he gets the ring before they return to Chicago.

"Good," he says, and pulls his wallet out.

\---

Andree starts raising her eyebrows at him over dinner, so when Patrick's helping Bryan to dry the dishes after, Jonny pulls her to one side.

"Have you talked to him?" she asks him.

"Nope," Jonny says.

Andree looks disappointed. "You said you were going to, today. And you came home looking so much more relaxed and happy, I thought you'd finally worked it out -"

"I got him a ring, Maman."

For a moment his mother looks utterly gobsmacked. Then she exhales, a little puff of air, and takes his face in her hands, kissing him on both cheeks. "That changes everything, then! You finally decided to - what do those Americans say? Grow a pair?" She says it in French, translating it literally from the English, and he begins laughing.

"I did think about what you told me, Maman," he said. "Or - well, I actually didn't, but I walked around today and went past Vandenbergs, and it was like - I didn't even have to think. I kind of just knew that this was the best way."

"And what way is that?"

"I'll ask him to marry me, when we're back in Chicago. If he says no, I'll know for sure that he doesn't - doesn't want me, and I'll free him, I'll let him go. But at least I can tell myself that I tried."

Andree strokes his face, smiling. "Oh, _cher_ ," she says warmly. "I don't think he'll say no."

\---

Jonny spends his first week back in Chicago on the phone a lot - with Heather, with Bowman, with Anne. He calls Anne first, to get the legalities out of the way. It takes her only a day to call him back.

"Well?" he demands.

"I think you're covered," she tells him. "There are a lot of precedents for cases like this. You will have no legal issues if you proceed."

"Great," Jonny says. "Can you draw up the document of manumission?"

"You know it's going to cost you, right? Freeing him? He's worked off barely half his debt."

"Yes," Jonny says. "Do it, please. And I want it couriered to my home in two days."

Anne sighs. "Fine."

\---

"Oh my god," Heather says.

"Oh my god," Bowman says.

"Yeah," Jonny says. He feels - good, somehow. Reckless, a little wild and lightheaded, but good. "I'm just giving you guys a heads up, in case this gets out."

"Jonny," Bowman begins.

"Whatever you want to say - _no_ ," Jonny says. "You're the one who told me to get a pleasure slave!"

"I just wanted to say congratulations, Jon," Bowman says gently.

Jonny deflates. "Oh," he says. "Uh - thanks."

\---

Jonny shoots a message off to Duncs and Seabs. He thinks his alternates ought to know, at least.

Seabs calls him half an hour later. "Jonny, are you sure about this? I mean, freeing the slave, it's whatever, but - _marrying_ him? That's a huge step, man. That's a huge commitment."

"Okay, but buying a slave isn't?"

"That's different," Seabs says. "Can't you just - I mean, just keep fucking him? You don't have to marry the guy."

"He's not a slave anymore," Jonny says. "I got my lawyer to prepare the documentation. I'm freeing him. This time next week, whether he agrees to marry me or not, he'll be free from bondage."

"Okay, did you bang your head against anything in Italy?" Seabs asks, sounding concerned.

"Jesus," Jonny snaps. "No, I didn't. And I'm doing this thing, so deal with it. I thought you liked Patrick."

"I do!" Seabs says. "It's just - god, Jonny, he's supposed to be just your slave, I didn't expect you to up and _marry him_."

"I told you," Jonny says. "He's no longer a slave. And anyway, he might not even agree to marriage. I'm just keeping you in the loop, if this gets big."

Seabs sighs down the phone. "As if he won't agree."

\---

"Hey," Patrick says.

"Mmm?" Jonny mumbles. He's just come his brains out, so he can't be blamed for being a little slow and addled at this moment.

"Is everything - okay? With you?"

"Yeah? Why wouldn't it be?"

"You've been kind of - distant, lately."

Jonny lifts himself off Patrick's body, balancing on his arms, and looks down at him disbelievingly. "Patrick, I'm _still inside you_."

But even as he speaks, his softened dick slips out of Patrick, and for a moment Jonny's lost in watching his come trickle out of Patrick after it.

"Not like this," Patrick says. "I mean, ever since we got back. You're always on the phone. You're either out at the gym or at yoga or skating, and when you're home you lock yourself away and talk for ages on the phone. I just thought - "

Jonny shifts to lie on his side next to Patrick, and as he moves the light from their night light falls on his Patrick's face; and now Jonny can see that Patrick looks - almost afraid. He's looking away from Jonny, and chewing on his lip, and Jonny's heart sinks.

"Thought what?" he asks. "What did you think was happening?"

"I dunno," Patrick mumbles. "I guess, I thought - you might be wanting to sell me on. Maybe."

Jonny feels like someone's just doused him in cold water. "Oh no," he says, pulling Patrick close to him and kissing him. "Babe, no - what the fuck, I'm not doing that. I would _never_ do that."

"Yeah, okay," Patrick says, muffled in Jonny's chest. "I told you it was dumb." He laughs a little, high and nervous and trembly, and Jonny -

He'd thought, maybe, that he was going to do it properly and nicely. Take Patrick out to a good restaurant, bring him to Navy Pier, go on the ferris wheel, and go down on one knee. He's had this entire romantic scene planned out in his head, so that - even if Patrick says no, Patrick will know Jonny went to some effort for him. He can't let Patrick leave him thinking that he couldn't be bothered trying.

But now - _now_ Jonny knows, that this is the time, in the middle of the night in their bedroom, Patrick's come still drying on his abs. It's not the least bit romantic, but Jonny's just - he's going to do it, right this moment, and to hell with whether it's right or wrong.

He gets out of bed and walks, naked, into their walk-in closet, where he's stashed the ring in the same safe he keeps Patrick's contract in. He hasn't received the documents from Anne yet, but it doesn't matter; he fishes out the original contract of bondage, and the deep blue velvet box with the ring, and goes back to Patrick with the items in hand.

Patrick's eyes are huge, wide, when Jonny drops the brown envelope onto the bed and climbs on knee-first, kneeling in front of Patrick's supine body. He feels kind of dumb, and awkward, with his dick flopping wetly against his thigh, but he ignores it, and plunges right in.

"First things first," Jonny says. "I want you to know that you're free. No matter what happens after this, okay? I got my lawyer to write up the document for the nullification of your slave contract, and it'll be here tomorrow, ready for your signature. So this - we're not going to need this anymore."

He picks up the envelope, and tears it into two, then into quarters, and eighths, before dropping the shreds over the side of the bed. Patrick's eyes look like they're going to bug out of his head.

"You're joking," he says, his voice shaking uncertainly.

"Not joking," Jonny says. "I'm dead serious. Always have been. So if you want to know what I've been doing on the phone these past few days, this is one of them."

"Oh jesus," Patrick moans, and puts his face in his hands. "I can't believe you - Jonny - "

"And there's a second thing," Jonny says, clutching the ring box. "Look at me, Patrick. Come on."

Patrick lowers his hands. Jonny can see his Adam's apple working in his throat. His cheeks are a dull red, even in the dim light.

"I kind of thought I was going to take you out, and ask you at Navy Pier. But then I figured - there's really nowhere better than the privacy of our home, is there?"

He holds out the box; Patrick stares dumbly at it, mouth opening and closing, like a goldfish, like he's not even aware he's doing it.

"Take it," Jonny says softly. "Please?"

Patrick sits up, slowly, and reaches out with a trembling hand; he's shaking so much Jonny can actually see the fine tremors in his fingers as he plucks the box from where it sits on Jonny's palm. He passes it from hand to hand, just staring at it; and just when Jonny thinks he has to tell Patrick to get the box open, Patrick pops it open himself, with the tip of his thumb.

There's nothing in the room except for the pounding of Jonny's heart in his chest, beating fast, like a bird trying to get out of its cage. His ears are ringing with the silence. Patrick's just looking at the ring inside on its bed of velvet, not doing anything, not taking it out.

"It's titanium," Jonny says, more to fill the silence than anything else. His voice is cracking as he speaks, but he ploughs on. "The person at Vandenbergs said that titanium's practically unbreakable. And it's actually - look, it's two bands twisted together, and that knot there is an infinity knot. I thought the whole thing was kind of awesome - like a good sort of symbolism, you know?"

Patrick's still looking at it, not saying anything.

"And, inside - I got it engraved, see?" Jonny says desperately.

When Patrick finally reaches up and takes the ring from its box, Jonny thinks he could cry with relief. Patrick holds it delicately between two fingers, and turns it up towards the night light.

"It's a - hockey stick?" Patrick asks, and Jonny's thankful that his voice sounds as hoarse as Jonny's does. At least Jonny's not the only one having - feelings, here.

"Yeah," Jonny says. "And my number, on the blade, look - it's tiny, but you can see it - "

Patrick nods jerkily. "I see it."

"You know what I'm gonna ask, right?" Jonny says.

Patrick lifts his eyes to him, and they're - Jonny's stunned, because they're brimming with tears, and Patrick is _crying_ , what the fuck, he's going to refuse, he's going to say no, fuck -

"I thought you made a mistake!" Patrick cries out.

Jonny blinks. "What?"

"I thought - I didn't think you loved me!"

"That is not what I was expecting to hear," Jonny says, his head spinning from confusion.

"In Florence," Patrick says, blinking against the tears; one rolls down his cheek, leaving a gleaming trail. "You said you loved me. You really said it?"

"Of course I said it," Jonny says, perplexed.

"I thought you didn't mean it!" Patrick cries. "I thought you just said it by mistake - in the heat of the moment or whatever - and I thought you didn't even remember you said it!"

"What are you talking about?" Jonny demands, blinking. "You never mentioned it - I thought _you_ didn't want me to mean it!"

"Oh my god," Patrick says - and then he quite literally flings himself at Jonny; Jonny has to catch him and balance himself on his knees so Patrick doesn't bowl him over.

Patrick manages to blubber into his chest, "I thought you said it in error - or that I heard it wrong. I didn't expect - and then when you said you were freeing me - I thought you just didn't want me anymore - "

"It was not an error, and I will _never_ not want you," Jonny says firmly. He cups his hand around the back of Patrick's neck, holding him close. "I said it, and I meant it. I mean it, now. I love you, and I want you to marry me, Patrick."

Patrick lifts his head. He looks a complete mess - there are tears all over his face, and his nose is red and swollen, but fuck, he's the most beautiful thing Jonny's ever seen, his lashes wet and shadowed against his cheeks.

"Um, if you please?" Jonny amends.

Patrick starts laughing through his tears, making these little hiccuppy sounds. His dimples are flashing in his tearstained cheeks, and he still looks utterly enchanting to Jonny. "If I please," he repeats. "I most certainly please, sir."

And that's it - all the fear and nervousness Jonny's been carrying around for the past couple of weeks just drops away, and Jonny feels so light it's like he can float away if Patrick isn't here, anchoring him. He's never even realised how much weight he was bearing in the first place, but now it seems like they were never there.

"Give me your hand," he says, and Patrick holds it up towards him, palm up; the ring is still there, and Jonny takes it, and slides it onto Patrick's ring finger.

The sight of the silvery metal band against Patrick's skin is just - it's too much. It's so much to take in.

"I love you," Patrick says, his face bright and open, and Jonny bends to kiss him. He doesn't let go for a long, long time.

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [this](https://www.to-tuscany.com/colledisotto) is the villa jonny rented in florence.
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](http://kanerboo.tumblr.com)!


End file.
